The Christmas Murder Game: The must-read Christmas murder mystery

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The interactive element of the book was great fun with some festive puzzles and anagrams for the reader to try and solve. Alexandra Benedict serves up a traditional country house Christmas mystery set in the Yorkshire Dales as the snow falls heavily, threatening to cut off Endgame House. 33 year old Lily Armitage lost her mother, Mariana, as a child in an apparent suicide in the famous maze at Endgame House, an event that scarred her, which she has never got over, as she keeps the world at bay, not allowing herself to get close to anyone so that she would never be hurt again. She is a gifted dressmaker, rustling up copies of whatever her clients desire, living in a tiny place in London. Her adoptive mother, a professor of poetry at Cambridge, Aunt Liliana, has died, leaving behind instructions that Lily must go to Endgame House, a place she has avoided after her mother died there. Lily was well developed as a complex and sympathetic character, but the supporting cast less so. The setting, a remote Yorkshire pile isolated by snow drifts and featuring such classic settings as an icehouse, a hedge maze and a woodland chapel in its grounds is extremely well described and evocative. Se non fosse stato per tutte le morti che hanno segnato la storia, avrei voluto partecipare anche io a quel gioco di natale. There is some beautiful writing in this novel. The author sets the scene well and her character depictions are detailed and complete.

The characters are varied and not all likeable. Lily, the main character, spends a long time agonising over life, the universe and where she is headed which can be a little tedious, the only thing she is sure about is that she doesn’t want to win the house, just to find out who killed her mother, if indeed anyone did. We spend a lot of time with lily memories which in some cases are wonderful and heart-warming, in others are a little boring. The other characters varied from the sarcastic and unlikeable to the truly loveable, but all are not who they seem to be at first glance (which is quite predictable) and there are a few twists I didn’t see coming. On the whole, I found this to be an enjoyable read that is well-paced and holds the attention. Stylistically it is a little awkward at times and comes across as a bit clunky on occasion, though this is a result - at least in part - of incorporating the reader's challenge into the narrative. De cualquier modo, como os decía me ha gustado bastante como está escrito, la historia y los personajes, unos más que otros claro, pero están todos bastante bien perfilados. I recently attended a book buzz event at a local bookstore and this book caught my interest, as it has all the ingredients for an intriguing mystery! Highly recommended by the publisher, I decided to give it a shot. She is currently writing scripts, short stories, a standalone psychological thriller andthe sequel to The Beauty of Murder.She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

The Christmas Murder Game is an entertaining seasonally-themed read, drawing on the long tradition of the snowed-in country house murder mystery, echoes of the board game "Cluedo" ("Clue" in the US) and the crime fiction trope of the deadly treasure hunt. As a snowstorm cuts them off from the village, the game turns deadly. Soon Lily realises that she is no longer fighting for an inheritance but for her life. I hope you never have to read this letter, because if it now lies in your hands then I am dead. I've entrusted your old friend Isabelle Stirling with the task of making sure you get this if I die before the Christmas Game begins. I fear that I shall. I hope I'm utterly, shamefully askew on the subject. But I don't think I am. En este caso ya iba avisada por algunas amigas lectoras quela editorial había vendido una cosa que no era y es que publicitan que es un libro con acertijos para el lector. Esto no es del todo cierto. A clever plot idea, badly executed. If Agatha Christie had written this, it would have been half the length and twice as good. 12 sonnets provide clues to the whereabouts of keys, but there is no possibility for the reader to solve these, so the potential of the plot is lost.

Despite being a crime mystery fan it was very hard for me to read a book where characters are blank and deprived of emotions (at some point it was deemed sort of a quality for the main character, as if to explain why she doesn't display any feelings, but sorry, it doesn't work like that) so it seems like their relatives dying is like every other Tuesday for them. The plot was also very repetitive and I guessed who is the killer around 30% of the book.

The explanation at the end is just making me angry as these people conceived of this game for a mansion and just let a whole family be murdered over it. Once the first body shows up... would you not stop the game? As far as I'm concerned, they should all be in prison. Me esperaba otro libro, al principio se me hizo un poco bola pero la segunda mitad se hace más amena. Alexandra Benedict’s narrative is structured around the traditional twelve days of Christmas, with a clue in the form of a sonnet-riddle being provided at some point on each day. Puzzle lovers like myself will delight in the liberal use of anagrams, literary and musical allusions and word association with which the participants, and by extension the reader, must contend. Second in the military crime series featuring Special Agents Scott Brodie and Magnolia "Maggie" Taylor, after The Deserter (2019).

i am late to the...game on this one, but since retailers have trained us to start focusing on christmas the day after thanksgiving (or in SEPTEMBER, if we're talking about michael's), i'm ignoring those heart-shaped boxes of chocolates that are already peppering the drugstore shelves and claiming an extension on christmas in t'other direction, without the panic and only the joy! joy! joy! of it. and, i suppose, also the murrrrrrder.

Diaries & Calendars

Lily has no desire to win the house. But her aunt makes one more promise: The clues will also reveal who really killed Lily's mother all those years ago. Che dire, ho assaporato ogni pagina, ogni capitolo, ogni giorno, fino ad arrivare alla conclusione di questa bella lettura. As the weather outside worsens, the various resentments, alliances and shared histories of the protagonists immediately become clear as the cousins reconnect and settle into Endgame. For our heroine, Lily Armitage the Christmas Game provides not only the opportunity to inherit Endgame, but also to solve her mother’s mysterious death 21 years previously. What an awful book. The writing is unnecessary festive and flowery in an attempt to hide anagrams but it just takes you out of the story. You think that no-one would describe a room with the phrase "womb-like tomb" without a valid reason but here we are.