The Christmas Murder Game

By Alexandra Benedict

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

Twelve clues. Twelve keys. Twelve days of Christmas. But how many will die before Twelfth Night?

Agatha Christie meets Clue in this delightful, tense manor house murder mystery.

The annual Christmas Game is afoot at Endgame House, the Armitages' grand family home. This year's prize is to die for—deeds to the house itself—but Lily Armitage has no intention of returning. She hasn't been back to Endgame since her mother died, twenty-one years ago, and she has no intention of claiming the house that haunts her dreams.

Until, that is, she receives a letter from her aunt promising that the game's riddles will give her the keys not only to Endgame, but to its darkest secrets, including the identity of her mother's murderer.

Now, Lily must compete with her estranged cousins for the twelve days of Christmas. The snow is thick, the phone lines are down, and no one is getting in or out. Lily will have to keep her wits about her, because not everyone is playing fair, and there's no telling how many will die before the winner is declared.

Including additional scavenger hunts for the reader, this clever murder mystery is the perfect gift for fans of classic mysteries, festive Christmas books, and armchair detective work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Oct 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781728263052

Alexandra Benedict

Alexandra (AK) Benedict is a bestselling, award-winning writer of short stories, novels and scripts. Educated at Cambridge, Sussex and Clown School, Alexandra has been an indie-rock singer, an actor, an RLF Fellow and a composer for film and TV, as well as teaching and running the prestigious MA in Crime Thrillers at City University. She is now a full-time writer and creative coach.   As AK Benedict, she writes acclaimed short stories, high-concept novels and award-winning audio drama for Big Finish, Audible UK, Audible US and BBC Sounds among others. She won the Scribe Award for her Doctor Who radio drama, The Calendar Man, and was shortlisted for the eDunnit Novel Award for The Beauty of Murder and the BBC Audio Drama Podcast Award for Children of the Stones. Her Christmas mysteries, The Christmas Murder Game and Murder on the Christmas Express, were both bestsellers, and The Christmas Murder Game was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger. Alexandra lives on the south coast of England with writer Guy Adams, their daughter, Verity, and dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

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Books. Change. Lives.

Copyright © 2021, 2022 by Alexandra Benedict

Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks

Cover design by Nick Stearn

Cover images © Shutterstock

Internal design by Holli Roach/Sourcebooks

Internal images © Bonnier Books UK

Sourcebooks, Poisoned Pen Press, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

[phone]

sourcebooks.com

Originally published as The Christmas Murder Game in 2021 in Great Britain by Zaffre, an imprint of Bonnier Books UK. This edition issued based on the hardcover edition published 2021 in Great Britain by Zaffre, an imprint of Bonnier Books UK

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Benedict, Alexandra, author.

Title: The Christmas murder game / Alexandra Benedict.

Description: Naperville, Illinois : Poisoned Pen Press, [2022]

Identifiers: LCCN 2022006663 (print) | LCCN 2022006664 (ebook) | (trade paperback) | (epub)

Subjects: LCGFT: Detective and mystery fiction. | Christmas fiction. |

Novels.

Classification: LCC PR6102.E536 C48 2022 (print) | LCC PR6102.E536

(ebook) | DDC 823/.92--dc23/eng/20220304

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006663

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006664

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

House Floor Plan

Armitage Family Tree

The Game Within The Christmas Murder Game

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

The Game within The Christmas Murder Game: Answers

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Cover

For Guy and Verity, my home

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I;

Perhaps some day, who knows?

But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,

And you’re too curious: fie!

You want to hear it? well:

Only, my secret’s mine, and I won’t tell.

From Winter: My Secret by Christina Rossetti

House Floor PlanArmitage Family Tree

The Game Within The Christmas Murder Game

Game 1: The Twelve Days of Anagrams

The clues in the book are revealed on each of the twelve days of Christmas, so I have embedded anagrams of each of the twelve gifts in the relevant section of the book.

First Day of Christmas: find the anagram of A partridge in a pear tree

Second Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Two turtle doves

Third Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Three French hens

Fourth Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Four colly birds

Fifth Day of Christmas: find two anagrams of Five gold rings

Sixth Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Six geese a-laying

Seventh Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Seven swans a-swimming

Eighth Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Eight maids a-milking

Ninth Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Nine ladies dancing

Tenth Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Ten lords a-leaping

Eleventh Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Eleven pipers piping

Twelfth Day of Christmas: find the anagram of Twelve drummers drumming

Each anagram appears as a sequence of full words. For example, one anagram of My true love sent to me is novelette sore tummy, which I will work into a sentence, i.e.: Alexandra rapidly consumed the novelette. Sore tummy aside, she considered it an interesting addition to the country house mystery. Or similar.

Some anagrams are easier than others to squeeze into a prose corset. Watch out for ones that don’t quite fit.

Game 2: Title Deeds

The titles of twelve of my favorite country house mysteries set at Christmas are sown throughout the book. Can you find them all?

Good luck!

Chapter One

December 24th

Christmas Eve

Snow is falling. Because of course it is. Nothing about this is going to be easy.

Lily presses her forehead against the cold window, her duvet wrapped around her. It’s four in the morning and she can’t sleep. Streetlights shower gold rings onto Catford High Street. Snowflakes dance down from the sky. Two blokes stumble along the middle of the road, arms around each other, shouting, It’s Christmas! A fox runs away from them, eyes glinting.

At one time, lying awake on Christmas Eve would have been down to excitement. But Lily doesn’t believe in Santa anymore. She hasn’t believed in anyone since Mum passed. And today she has to go back to the place where her mum died.

Lily hauls a hoodie over her head and gets out of bed. She fights her way between the rails of costumes and into her tiny living room. Well, that’s what the previous tenant had called it. Lily doesn’t really live anywhere. This is her workroom. It’s stuffed with starched cotton and velvet; thread, trims, and ribbons; boxes of beads, bone, and steel. Her sewing machine waits by the window. A paper dress pattern lies in pieces on the floor, like the silhouette of a body at a crime scene.

It’s not much of a home, but at least she doesn’t have to house-share. She needs solid walls between her and other people. And the lack of space is a good reason not to bring anyone back, even if she is lonely. That’s what Lily tells herself anyway.

Avoiding the piles of material, she steps from one glimpse of exposed carpet to another over to the kitchen in the corner of the room. If you can call a camping stove, toaster, and microwave a kitchen. She puts the kettle on, and a tea bag in her mug, then drags her suitcase out from under a box of tulle. What should she take for Christmas at a country house she hates? The high street doesn’t cater for that. Good thing she makes clothes for a living.

Wash bag filled, corsets and dresses folded inside the case, Lily sits on the sole armchair to drink her tea. Only now does she let herself think about the journey ahead. Of the relatives she’ll have to see. Of Endgame House itself.

Just the thought of the place makes her heart hammer like her sewing machine at full blast, so she takes out her latest commission and starts embroidering by hand. With every flick of the needle, each satin stitch in place, Lily calms. Her heart is back to slow pedal speed. Maybe she should stay in her flat till Christmas is over. Not go anywhere at all. Get back in bed with a box of chocolates and pull the duvet over the holiday. That would save a lot of driving and, more importantly, it would keep the pain where she’s placed it behind walls and locked doors in her mind.

But if she doesn’t go, she’ll let down Aunt Liliana. Again.

Lily reaches into her handbag and takes out the envelope. She strokes it. Traces the looping letters made in her aunt’s handwriting. When she eases the letter out of the envelope, the paper is as soft and smooth as Aunt Liliana’s rose-powdered skin. It still smells of the base notes in her Calvin Klein perfume—Truth.

Dearest Lily,

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.

So, this is my insurance policy, delivered by my lawyer. I know you don’t want to come to Endgame, or play a silly divertissement. I know that you have absolutely no interest in inheriting the house, even though I dearly wish it to be yours. But I have another reason for asking you to take part in the game. It is time that you learned the truth, and the game is the way I will reveal it.

If that’s not enough of a reason, then let me give you one part of the puzzle. Your mother was wrongfully killed. There. I’ve said it. I know you will have so many questions, and the answers will come. They will be there, in every clue: the beginning and end of all that has haunted our family for so many years. The coldest of cases. Each clue, bar one, is a message to you. Heed them. Dead women’s words cannot be ignored, diminished, or apologized away.

I haven’t had the guts to come forward and say what happened to Mariana—your mum, my beautiful, brilliant big sister—because I’ve also done wrong. Maybe you will have more courage. Maybe you will have the fortitude to sing out. I hope so. You have always been loved. I know you don’t like to talk about your mum, but she loved you so much, and she didn’t leave you. She never would. I’m so sorry I couldn’t prove it at the time.

Please go to Endgame and play this Christmas. You’ll be well looked after. I’ve hired a housekeeper, but other than that, it’ll be you, your cousins, and their partners, if they have them. It won’t be a merry gathering, but it’s essential that you’re there. It’s my last wish. How awful is that? The deceased asking a favor of her favorite. That’s awful, too. Don’t tell Sara and Gray. If I weren’t dead, I’d be ashamed of myself.

Your mother and I taught you so much, as did your grandmother. Search the past for memories that can help you solve the clues and what happened to Mariana Rose. You’ll need to remember everything, I’m afraid. And I am afraid. For me, and for you. Don’t trust ANY of your relatives, for their sake as much as yours. Knowledge can lead to death. You’ll also have to keep that secret I suspect you’ve got hidden. I want to give you freedom, Lily. To help you escape your own walls. It’s time to take those doodles and transpose them onto the real world. Cast those corsets of f. Major clues are hidden among the minor. You’ll need to remember how good you are at this. No more hiding.

Adopting you was the best thing I ever did. I hope this game is the next best.

Your ever-loving aunt, and adoptive mother,

Liliana Armitage-Feathers

Lily’s heart feels like its stitches have been unpicked. She has to go. And soon. If it’s snowing in London, you can bet there’ll be drifts by dinnertime in Yorkshire.

Chapter Two

Sure enough, it’s deep snow by the time she gets to the Dales. Not the picturesque kind of snow—not soft flakes landing on the tongue like peppermint feathers—this is great gobbets of white hurtling toward the windshield. Lily speeds up the wipers to double time but it’s still like driving into a vortex. She can’t see where she’s going. And that doesn’t just apply to the snowstorm.

The light’s fading already. Two thirty, and the sky is the cold dark blue of flames tickling a Christmas pudding. The Yorkshire lanes don’t help—artery narrow, hedgerows encroaching on the road like bad cholesterol. And then there are the trees, whispering and shushing above her, heads together, plotting.

Last time Lily was on this road, she was going the other way. Aged twelve, driven from Endgame House for what she thought was the last time. If Lily believed in ghosts, it’d be different; she’d have stalked its halls forever, trying to find her mother’s specter. But she doesn’t believe in ghosts, or much else.

As she drives round a corner, a deer rushes out. Slamming on the brakes, time treacles as she tries to stop the car from spinning into the bank. Greenery whirls around her. She hears a screech but can’t tell if it’s from her, the wheels, or the deer. If this is it, the end, maybe it’d be easier to lift her hands from the wheel and close her eyes.

No.

She grips the wheel and steers away from the open arms of a tree. She has responsibilities now, and part of that involves returning to Endgame House.

When the car steams to a stop, there’s no sign of the deer. Please don’t be dead, she says in her head as she climbs out. Heart pounding, she bends to check under the chassis. Nothing.

And no heart-wrenching remnants on the wheels. She breathes out and, at the same time, hears a harrumph, an exhale from the bushes. A deer is among the trees to the side of the car. Her fawn stands next to her, its ears cupped.

The deer stares at Lily, and she gazes back. Snow settles on both of their heads. The deer blinks, then walks away, her fawn following. Their breath condenses into ghosts. She watches till both animals disappear, safe, into the trees.

As Lily gets back into the car, she spots the snowflakes on her sleeves. Cog-like, silver in the half-light, they turn the black arms of her coat into steampunk chain mail. She has an image of making a corset-dress of armored snowflakes for her first collection, of standing on a runway with an army of models wearing Lily Armitage couture.

Then, like a chamois on a windscreen, she swipes the thought away. She’s learned to not stick her neck out, in business or otherwise. She’ll keep to the historical replicas she’s known for. Don’t stand out. Don’t speak up. Stay in the shadows, and then you can’t be seen.

Driving away, the car coughs and sputters like it’s got something in its throat. She pats the steering wheel. We can do this, she says. She hopes the car is more convinced than she is. Not far now. And it shouldn’t be. The villages, with their single, clinged-to pubs, are getting further apart. Why are country houses plonked in the middle of nowhere? Probably because the resident lords owned the whole area and wanted to avoid the plebs. She imagines the onetime owners of Endgame House standing by the front door, looking out over their land from the top of the hill, tenant farmers far off below—worker bees kept at a distance so the queen needn’t be bothered by their buzzing.

Lily prefers London, or any of the other cities she’s lived in. There’s always something to listen to, even if it’s the sirens that sound as regularly as the chapel bell at Endgame House. And you’re never cut off from people, at least not in the same way. She can choose to isolate herself in the city, hunker down with a sewing pattern, not see anyone for days. Here, snow doesn’t give you a choice but to stay put. She used to love the snow days at Endgame House, running around the maze—even more difficult to navigate in a whiteout—hearing the silence a snowstorm brings. Now, the thought of being shut in with her family makes her throat constrict.

Which is why, when Aunt Liliana had first sent the invitation to Endgame House, Lily had turned it down. She had no interest in playing one last Christmas Game to see who would win the title deeds.

But then, a month ago, Liliana had died and, two days later, her letter arrived. Everything changed. Feelings she thought she’d stuffed down deep enough to never resurface had emerged, like last year’s gnarled and forgotten orange from the bottom of a stocking. Coming back to where it all started would only make it worse.

Even the GPS doesn’t want to direct her to the house. With hardly any signal here, it keeps glitching, refusing to refresh while she continues to drive. As a result, she only sees the burgundy sign for ENDGAME HOUSE HOTEL as she drives past. Her heart beats faster. This is the first time she’ll have seen it as a hotel. When she lived at Endgame House, it was a conference center, run by Uncle Edward with help from Aunt Liliana and Mum. Edward had long had a dream of turning it into a fancy hotel, but his dream had only recently come to pass when he died. Moral of the story: don’t have dreams, and never let them come true.

It’s another five minutes before she finds a place to turn round, and every one of those minutes involves wondering whether she should go back to London. And now’s the time to make the decision. She’s at the gates to Endgame that bar the road into the estate. As the gates part, the family crest, sculptured in bronze, splits down the middle. You don’t have to stay, she tells herself as she drives through. You can leave at any time. In the rearview mirror, the gates clamp closed behind her.

The car groans and digs deep, as does she, as they start up the hill. She’d forgotten how steep it was, but then she’d never had to drive up it in a fifteen-year-old Mini whose suspension had gotten lower with every one of those years.

The forest that encircles the estate presses in, as if trying to stare through the car windows. She used to play among the trees with Tom and Ronnie, two of her cousins. Playful images of wading in the stream disappear as the muddy incline relents its gradient and is clothed in gravel. The forest stands back, as if afraid to go any further.

She drives onto the circular gravel driveway. Every sound of the stones moving under the tires brings up a new memory: bringing a huge Christmas tree home on the roof of her mum’s car; her cousins arriving for a summer of fun; the silent ambulance taking her mum’s body away.

The car gives a throaty sigh of relief as she pulls up. Lily, though, holds her breath. Her shoulders lift as if they could hide behind her ears. Her hands form fists. She can’t bring herself to look at the house, not yet, but she feels its presence all the same. Endgame House looms just out of her peripheral vision, as it has every day since she left all those years ago.

It takes every bit of strength she has not to turn the car round. Instead, Lily takes her aunt’s letter from her pocket and reads through it again.

She then closes her eyes and conjures the last time she saw Liliana. It was a few weeks before she died. They were in the Orchard Tea Rooms, walking distance from the house Liliana had lived in ever since moving from Endgame when Lily’s mum died. She had accepted a fellowship at her alma mater, Clare College; adopted Lily; and taken her, with Sara and Gray, Liliana’s biological children, to live in Grantchester. They were having lunch to celebrate Aunt Liliana’s retirement from her position as chair of English at Cambridge. At least that’s why Lily had thought they were there.

Liliana had piled a scone with so much butter, jam, cream, and fruit that it was a patisserie Buckaroo, toppling before she got it to her mouth. She laughed so much, she spilled cider on her tweed skirt. She brushed it off and said, loudly, That’s why you should make corsets out of tweed, darling; it resists the most pernicious of stains.

There aren’t many historical frocks made of tweed, Aunt Lil.

You should be moving on from all that, Lily, her aunt said. Rehashing the work of others is hardly artistic. It’s not like you’re putting a new spin on things. Don’t you think it’s time you did something with your life?

I’m fine as I am, Lily said. Her lips knitted together.

No one says they’re ‘fine’ and means it. ‘Fine’ means anything but. Aunt Liliana then sighed and grabbed Lily’s hand. Her face suddenly serious, she whispered, You will come this Christmas, won’t you?

I can’t, Lily replied. You know that.

Liliana fixed her eyes on Lily’s and said, If not for me, then for your mother.

She was invoking Mum, blackmailing Lily into attending. Anger unspooled in Lily. She whipped back her hand. She wanted to shout, say exactly what she thought. Instead, she gripped the table and looked down at the place mat. That’s not fair, Liliana, Lily said. It’s only a game.

This isn’t entertainment, Lily; it’s life or death.

I thought it was about inheriting the house.

On the surface level, it is. But it’s more than that.

Then tell me, Lily said, leaning forward. Let me in, for once.

Aunt Liliana laughed. There was a splinter of ice running through the sound. Says you, the snow queen herself. You have your locked doors, Lily, and I have mine. And I shall open mine, in my own way. At Christmas. Aunt Liliana looked around the tearoom. Bunting fluttered from wooden beams as the door opened, letting in the autumn wind. Winter is on its way. It’s time both you and I faced up to things. Time you stepped out of your locked room and found your way home.

I don’t have anything to face, Lily said, quietly. And I don’t have a home.

Everyone has a home, Aunt Liliana replied. It doesn’t have to be a place; home could be a person. Or a cat. Aunt Liliana stroked her leg as if her cat, Winston (after Smith, not Churchill), was hunkered down on her lap. Sometimes it takes a very long time to find our home. She looked out of the window, a flash of pain on her face, then turned back to Lily. Her eyes were the same dark blue shot through with skeins of green as Lily’s. Liliana, though, had a corona of amber around her pupils, which now seemed to blaze: a lump of coal surrounded by fire. They always did that when she was about to say something cruel or insightful. But if you don’t have a home, why are you drawing the maze on your place mat?

Lily looked down. Her right forefinger was tracing the way through Endgame House’s famous hedged labyrinth.

You got stuck in that maze when you found your mum dead at the center, Liliana said. If you don’t enter it again, you’ll never get out.

Anger ran through Lily. She closed her eyes and imagined that rage as thread, wrapped round a bobbin and fed through a needle. She would use it later. For now, she took two ten-pound notes from her wallet, let them float like autumn leaves onto the table, and left.

Liliana had phoned many times in the days that followed, but Lily hadn’t answered or replied to her messages. She hadn’t known what to say. So she didn’t. She kept silent.

And then it was too late.

After she’d first read the letter, she sat with it on her lap for what must have been an hour. Her heart hurt and she kept whispering I’m sorry, I’m sorry, over and over.

Lily now folds the letter and places it carefully back in its envelope, trying to tuck the memory away with it. She takes a deep breath and taps the steering wheel—the car’s done its job. Now she has to do hers.

Out of the safety of her little car, she walks across the gravel, head down so she can’t see the house. She concentrates instead on the way the snow battles with the stones—the early skirmishers fall and melt, but the next phalanx of snowflakes settles, and the next. Row after row of snow soldiers stand on each other’s white shoulders until all is conquered.

At the center of the drive, she stops at the sundial and swipes the snow from its top. The message on its cracked face reads: THERE IS NOT TIME ENOUGH. Cheery. Especially in bleak midwinter, when the day scarpers before it’s started. Mum taught her to tell the time in this very spot. Lily traces her fingers over the raised numerals, her touch covering that of her mum’s from years ago.

The low sun leaves a long shadow, telling her it’s just turned three. The letter told her to arrive at teatime—3:30 p.m. Teatime here, in the gorgeous north, the wilds of Yorkshire, means dinnertime in the south.

Reviews for The Christmas Murder Game

[jenn88-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The premise sounded like this would be a good book - a big ol' house where estranged cousins come together over Christmas to follow clues and solve mysteries. But sadly the writing was awful. So many similes and metaphors and just awfulness.

"He leans into her like a greyhound putting its weight on someone visiting a dogs’ home."

"Like a snake whose teeth have been removed but still smiles."

I have so many things highlighted that just grated on my nerves and made absolutely no contribution to the story. I wish I had've skipped this one.

[adonisguilfoyle · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A last minute Instagram recommendation - the Christmas theme pulled me in! I'm not generally a reader of Agatha Christie and her ilk and most of the hidden and not so hidden nods to the golden age of detective fiction in this novel went over my head, but I enjoyed the clues in sonnet form. The characters not so much. Also the author's devotion to similes and metaphors drove me to distraction in the first few chapters - 'She tuts like a pissed-off clock'? What?After the sudden death of her aunt, Lily Armitage reluctantly gives up her self-contained existence in London to return to the family home, Endgame, in Yorkshire. In a last letter, Aunt Liliana has promised that the truth behind the alleged suicide of her mother, Mariana, in the maze at Endgame some twenty years earlier will be revealed - but first Lily has to play the Christmas game, a family tradition which used to promise extra presents after a cryptic treasure hunt but will now decide who inherits the house. Lily wants nothing to do with the family estate and is only seeking answers and closure at a significant time in her life. Her cousins - Liliana's children Sara and Gray, her uncle Edward's sons Tom and Ronnie, along with Ronnie's wife Philippa - are serious about the game, however. Deadly serious. When the housekeeper, Mrs Castle, begins to set the clues, following the instructions in Liliana's will, dark secrets are threatened with exposure and someone will go to any lengths to claim their inheritance, even killing the competition.I'm sure this is a classic detective trope - And Then There Were None springs to mind - but the plot reminded me more of a Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) episode titled 'It's Supposed to be Thicker Than Water', where distant cousins are invited to a country pile and then nobbled one by one because they stand to inherit a fortune already earmarked by a faithful retainer. Of course, that made me suspect the wrong people in this story! I'm never very good at picking out the killer and rarely try to anticipate the unravelling of the story but I had two suspects and both were wrong - like Lily, I suppose I'm just a terrible judge of character!Apart from suffering from a near fatal case of 'final girl' syndrome, constantly walking into danger and confiding in the wrong people, I didn't wholly object to Lily like some reviewers. The author's writing style and woke asides - a random Twittering about how she finds 'A Fairytale of New York' and 'Baby It's Cold Outside' objectionable is shoehorned in - can make Lily's introspective nature seem rather overbearing but she's a worthy protagonist in the end, quiz smart if not always street smart. Could have done without the 'dark blue eyes shot through with skeins of green', though. This is not a romance novel. (Guess what colour cousin Gray's eyes are?)The themes are a little heavy-handed - Endgame House? Mrs Castle the housekeeper? - and I doubt anyone would be as cavalier about violent death outside of a murder mystery novel with fancy clues driving the plot, but I was entertained and intrigued enough to keep reading.

[lindapanzo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An enjoyable Christmastime mystery in which family members try to solve riddles at the annual family Christmas Games. The prize is ownership of the family home and our sleuth, Lily, has always done well at the Christmas Games. While she doesn't want to win the house, she does want to find out more about her mother's death.This is a nice puzzler with a Christmas atmosphere. I didn't like many of the characters, though I liked this book well enough to pick up the upcoming Christmas mystery from this author.(I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via Net Galley, in exchange for a fair and honest review.)

[jetangen4571 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

anagrams, country-house, mystery, snow-season, contemporary, closed-circle-mystery, secrets, treasure-hunt, greed, family-drama, friction, murder, inheritance, riddles****Who will be the next to die?The plan is good, but there is just something missing in the execution and some of the characters seemed to lack depth. The word games were just my thing, however! The publisher's blurb is a fine hook.I requested and received a free e-book copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. Thank you

[brianewilliams · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a contemporary country house murder mystery, done in the style of Christie's "And Then There Were None". It's got a twisty plot with a complex backstory that doesn't get fully explained. The characters are there to support the narrator's role as a victim, but never seem to take on a life of their own. The setting of the family home, converted into a convention centre, suits the plot although it never seems to come into its own to support the story. The storytelling is complicated with riddles and word puzzles, which requires real engagement on the part of the reader. Some may like the challenge of solving them. It's not an easy read, although the author has put plenty of thought and creativity into her work and deserves credit for that.

[lostinalibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lily has been invited back to Endgame, the rambling manor that had been her home before her mother committed suicide when she was a child. Her Aunt Liliana who had taken her in wants her to take part in the Christmas games, a family tradition since she was a child. This year, however, the game will last for the entire twelve days of Christmas and there is a special prize. Whoever wins wins Endgame. Lily doesn’t want to go back to Endgame and she certainly doesn’t want to own it. But her aunt has promised her something much more important to her to entice her to return.- to learn what really happened the night her mother died.When I saw The Christmas Murder by Alexandra Benedict on Netgalley, I had to request it. Reading Christmas cozy mysteries are my favourite Christmas tradition and I look forward every year to them. This book fits into that tradition nicely. It’s well-written with plenty of twists and turns. The game itself was interesting and the mystery kept me guessing throughout. My one criticism - there were a lot of characters, some of whom seemed to be there just to add suspects without really adding much to the story. But that aside, I really enjoyed The Christmas Murder and hope to see more by this author especially around future Christmases.

[nicx27 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Christmas Murder Game is an inventive and clever story of family rivalries. The Armitage cousins return to Endgame House, the large country house in Yorkshire where they spent much of their childhood. Lily feels the most attachment to it as she spent more time there than the others and it's where her beloved mother died. The game itself, set by Lily's aunt, takes place over the twelve days of Christmas and centres around solving cryptic clues and finding keys. The victor wins Endgame House. This is a book that sounds like it ought to be cosy crime set in the past but it's most definitely contemporary and a serious crime thriller. There are clues throughout the book that were way too clever for me to solve but which I enjoyed watching the characters try to work out. The author plotted the story perfectly and to great effect and is obviously a master clue-solver herself!Lily is a great heroine, very intelligent, quite introverted, and very likeable. There are a couple of other characters I really liked but there were also some thoroughly unpleasant ones too. There were some unexpected events at Endgame House and not everybody is what they seem. I'm left feeling very glad I'm not a part of the Armitage family.The Christmas Murder Game puts a new spin on the country house whodunnit, an atmospheric locked room style mystery with a frantic dash to collect the keys and win the game. It felt a bit like being in a game of Cluedo and I thought it made a nice change to the usual Christmas reading fare.