The Christmas Murder Game

by Alexandra Benedict

Overview

A locked-room Christmas mystery where riddles reveal deadly family secrets… and the only escape is through the truth.

Fans of Agatha Christie and Lucy Foley will savor its locked-room twists, interactive puzzles, and chilling emotional stakes. Play along, uncover the truth, and beware: at Endgame House, the most dangerous gift is buried in the past.

Lily Armitage never wanted to return to Endgame House. The grand estate holds too many painful memories—including the unsolved murder of her mother, twenty-one Christmases ago.

But when a cryptic invitation arrives, Lily can't ignore it. Her aunt has resurrected the family's infamous holiday tradition: twelve days of riddles, one each day until Twelfth Night. The prize? The keys to Endgame House—and a promise to reveal her mother's killer.

Snowed in with her estranged, scheming cousins and a deadly game underway, Lily must confront the ghosts of her past, decipher riddles that cut to the bone, and survive a chilling race for the truth.

Because at Endgame House, everyone has something to hide. And this Christmas, the truth is worth killing for.

Praise for The Christmas Murder Game:

"Curl up by the fire (and lock all the doors) for this Christmas cracker of a book." —C.S. Green, author of Sleep Tight

"The perfect Christmas read . . . and puzzles galore for both readers and the players of the game." — W.C. Ryan, author of A House of Ghosts

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728263038
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	10/04/2022
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Alexandra Benedict studied English at Cambridge and creative writing at Sussex. As A.K. Benedict, she published the critically acclaimed THE BEAUTY OF MURDER and THE EVIDENCE OF GHOSTS. She has composed film and television soundtracks and performed as a musician before becoming a full-time writer in 2012.

Editorial Reviews

"There’s love trapped in this house too, and the word puzzles posed to the family (and anagrams listed in the foreword for readers to solve as they read the book) provide an intriguing and engrossing way to get to that warmth. Just the ticket for next winter." — First Clue

"A perfectly plotted festive mystery." — Susi Holliday, author of The Last Resort

"Curl up by the fire (and lock all the doors) for this Christmas cracker of a book." — C.S. Green, author of Sleep Tight

"Utterly original and breathtakingly intriguing . . . A must-read this Christmas." — Steph Broadribb, author of the Lori Anderson Bounty Hunter series

"The perfect updating of the classic Christmas Country House mystery . . . Fabulous festive fun." — Derek Farrell, author of the Danny Bird Mysteries

"The perfect Christmas read . . . and puzzles galore for both readers and the players of the game." — W.C. Ryan, author of A House of Ghosts

"It’s a snowy Christmas Eve in this fun contemporary British country house mystery...Puzzle-loving readers will enjoy searching for anagrams of the gifts mentioned in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and for the titles of 12 of the author’s favorite country house mysteries embedded in the text." — Publishers Weekly

"Super brainy." — Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2022-07-08
A couturier returns to her late aunt’s home in Yorkshire for one last Christmas reunion that promises more sorrow than joy.

Liliana Armitage-Feathers was always an incorrigible game player. Now that she’d dead, her idea of an appropriate legacy is to hide anagrammatic clues to 12 possible keys to an unknown place where the deeds to Endgame House are hidden in 12 sonnets, each one of which will be made available to her prospective heirs on one of the 12 days of Christmas, with the house to go to the relative who finds the key that unlocks the hiding place. Lily Armitage, a corsetier still grieving her mother, Mariana Armitage, who died under questionable circumstances on Boxing Day 21 years ago, doesn’t want her Aunt Liliana’s house, but she does want to honor her memory. So she agrees to play along with her cousins Tom and Ronnie and Rachel Armitage, whom she rather likes, and Sara Armitage-Feathers, whom she doesn’t much like at all and suspects of murder. As Christmas passes into New Year’s and beyond, the clues and keys mount up. So do the casualties, raising real suspicions whether this will be a holiday-themed remake of And Then There Were None. Never fear; enough suspects will remain at the end to make the big reveal moderately surprising, though the bigger surprise is how many felonies end up attributed to how many perpetrators. Just in case this setup isn’t artificial enough for you, Benedict piles two more games atop the games her characters play: a dozen hidden anagrams of the gifts of the 12 days of Christmas, and a dozen hidden references to earlier Christmas-themed whodunits.

Super brainy in an appropriately superficial way.

Kirkus Reviews