Six Brilliant Reads: Christmas Murder Mysteries

There’s nothing like a good murder mystery. Add a Christmas setting and you’ve got a whole new level of tension. There’s often snow to be considered too.

If you love Cluedo, you’ll definitely want to put this on your Christmas reading wish list. The Christmas Clue by Nicola Upson is a fictional story based on real-life characters Anthony and Elva Pratt, the couple who invented the popular board game. In the novel they are visiting a Rottingdean hotel during WWII where they are providing the Christmas entertainment. Unfortunately, things get off to a bad start with their discovery of a dead body: Miss Silver, bludgeoned to death in a sweet shop. Nicola Upson is the author of the Josephine Tey series of period mysteries, which is also highly recommended.

The Austen Christmas Murders by Jessica Bull is the third in a series of Regency mysteries with amateur sleuth Jane Austen figuring out whodunit. It’s easy to imagine such a fine student of human nature picking apart motives, means and opportunities. In this Christmas story, Jane discovers a skeleton in the Deane Rectory cellar and finds herself delving into the legend of a young bride thought to haunt the nearby woods. Jessica Bull was shortlisted for a CWA First Novel Dagger for the first book in the series, Miss Austen Investigates, so expectations are high for this mystery.

Sophie Hannah has breathed new life into the popular series of novels featuring Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective. Hercule Poirot’s Silent Night brings us to Norfolk, where a well-liked postmaster has been murdered in a hospital ward. At the behest of Cynthia Catchpole, mother of Hercule’s sidekick Inspector Edward Catchpole, the two miss out on a restful Christmas break to investigate the killing. Cynthia puts them up in her crumbling mansion on the coast, as fears of more murders unsettle Cynthia and her friend Arnold, soon to be admitted to the same hospital. Arnold’s wife is convinced his number’s up unless the killer is found, but won’t say why. Can Poirot solve the crime and get home before Christmas.

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson is the third in a series featuring reluctant sleuth Ernest Cunningham. In this story, he’s backstage at a magic show when he finds himself perplexed by a suspect covered in blood but has no knowledge of how it got there, and a murder committed without anyone having set foot in the room where it happened. And there’s also an advent calendar, it being Christmas. Can Ernest catch the killer and get home for Christmas alive? A quirky, light-hearted mystery told in Ernest’s trademark wittily confiding style.

In The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson, Ashley is a lonely American student in London, invited to her classmate’s family manor house for Christmas – the perfect country holiday. Ashley’s diary entries also note the romantic potential of seeing Adam, her friend’s twin brother. But the Chapman family’s motives are not what they appear to be, and the house, while stately is rundown. Holiday horrors lie in wait for our unsuspecting heroine, with a shocking twist and surprising revelation completing this humorous, gothic murder mystery.

The Twelve Days of Murder by Andreina Cordani follows eight friends from university who called themselves the Masquerade Murder Society. They’re a privileged bunch who delighted in staging perfectly planned and somewhat grisly murders to solve, always fictional, until their final Christmas Masquerade, when one of the eight disappeared. Twelve years later the society has been called to Scotland for a Christmas-themed masquerade party. But there are secrets each is hiding, and then, a murder. Of course, it all goes back to what happened all those years ago. A quirky, complicated mystery with plenty of chilly, Scottish Christmas atmosphere.

Posted by JAM

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