The Christmas Murder Game

Murder Mansion

The Christmas Murder Game
by Alexandra Benedict
Bonnier books
ISBN: 9781838775384

The Christmas Murder Game is the first of what I shall, at present, call a trilogy of unconnected Christmas murder mysteries by writer Alexandra Benedict. I read the second and third ones, Murder On The Christmas Express (reviewed here) and The Christmas Jigsaw Murders (reviewed here) last year, not knowing that she’d actually written a trio of books three years running, starting with this one. Alas, there’s no new Christmas mystery by her this year but I live in hope that another one will be forthcoming at some point.

This one starts as the others, with a brief set of rules telling the reader how to play various games hidden within the text of the book. This one has two hidden games in it (plus an acknowledgements word search at the end)... the first being various anagrams of the gifts of the twelve days of Christmas hidden within the text of the relevant chapter and a second game being the titles of 12 of Benedict’s favourite mansion/manor house/family get together style mysteries hidden in the prose.

This book tells the story of main protagonist Lily, who returns after some years estranged from her adopted family to Endgame Manor in Yorkshire, taking the trip up from London near the start of the book. Her mother, who she found dead as a child in the big maze on the grounds of the house was the catalyst for her Aunt Liliana adopting her and taking her away from the manor at a young age. However, now Liliana is dead and her written voice from beyond the grave beckons Lily back to take part in the last of her annual Christmas games against other members of the family... the prize primarily being inheriting the house and grounds but, in the letter sent to Lily, the main stake is to uncover the equally cryptic hidden clues to find that her mum didn’t slash her own wrists as had been reported... but that she was, in fact, murdered.

And it’s just as good as the other two Christmas themed books I mentioned above... in fact, I think this one might just be my favourite of the bunch. Naturally for these kinds of books, the story focusses a lot on the various family characters, their history with the main protagonist and the secrets about various people, including Lily, as the plot goes on. And, also like a lot of these kinds of books, sometimes you can’t see those twists coming and... yeah... other times you do. But I certainly didn’t see an early complication for the central character coming before it’s revealed a few chapters into the novel, so I was pleased and pleasantly surprised by that.

And the writer is very skilled, not just with the puzzles, anagrams and the general enigma of the main plot but, also with the beautiful, sometimes poetic way she expresses things. For instance, in a brief childhood flashback when a character has the complex house of cards he was building knocked down by his sister, Benedict describes “His tears falling like spades down his cheeks.” And another phrase which impressed me with its vivid evocation of sense memory from earlier in the book was, “Lily yanks her bobble hat down over her ears. She’d forgotten how the Yorkshire wind wants to get to know you…”

And I’m doubly pleased to say that I learned something too from this book. I’d never come across the term before but now I know that prosopagnosia is the term for the neurological disorder known as face blindness. Anytime I learn something like this from a novel, I’m always pleased.

However, other than that, I’ve not got much else to add by way of observations on The Christmas Murder Game. The main reveal of a certain antagonist didn’t exactly blind side me, to be honest but, the old giallo ploy of leaving so many suspects on the loose did at least slow me down a little. I very much enjoyed this one and would recommend it as a December read if you are into mystery novels, for sure.