Publishers Weekly
08/08/2022
It’s a snowy Christmas Eve in this fun contemporary British country house mystery from Benedict (The Beauty of Murder as A.K. Benedict), and Lily Armitage, a 33-year-old costume corset maker is heading from her London home to the wilds of Yorkshire and the 17th-century manor known as Endgame House, where she lived as a child. She hasn’t set foot in the place since she left it at the age of 12 after her mother’s death. She’s only returning because her recently deceased aunt and adoptive mother, Liliana Armitage-Feathers, has left a letter for her with the family lawyer in which Liliana begs Lily, as a last request, to participate in the family’s traditional Christmas treasure hunt, in which all the Armitage cousins take part. Only this time, the winner will get Endgame House itself, while the other participants will get nothing. Greed-fueled animosity runs high, and it’s no surprise when, one by one, the cousins start turning up dead. 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. This isn’t for those looking for surprising reveals. (Oct.)
From the Publisher
"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
"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
"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
Kirkus Reviews
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.
