I’m delighted to be taking part in the blog tour for The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict. It’s a little different from your regular tours as all the posts will have a clue, and you can win a prize!
If you’ve been following along with the tour, you should have ten clues already. The first letter of each word over the days will spell out a 12 letter phrase. What could it be?
Here’s clue #11
Tricky? Or not? Don’t forget to check out tomorrow’s post on the blog tour to get your final clue!
And now to the book itself!
Follow the clues. Find the fortune. Solve the Mystery. This Christmas is to die for. Let the game begin…
‘Endgame has kept our secrets for half a century, now it’s time for it, and its secrets, to have a new owner.’
When Lily returns home to her aunt’s manor house, she discovers that in order to inherit, she and her estranged cousins must stay together over the Christmas week and take part in a family tradition: the annual treasure hunt.
But as they are drawn deeper into the game, the clues seem to point not to the deeds to the manor house, but to the key to a twenty-year-old mystery: what really happened to Lily’s mother?
As a snowstorm cuts them off from the village, it becomes apparent that the game has turned deadly and that Lily is fighting for more than just an inheritance: she is now fighting for her life. Does she have what it takes to survive?
12 clues, 12 keys and 12 days of Christmas for the heirs of Endgame House to find their inheritance, but how many will die before Twelfth Night?
Oh, this book is a huge amount of fun. A locked room (well, house) mystery where a bunch of people are stuck in an isolated manor house in Yorkshire in a snowstorm. Their aunt has left them a series of clues, one for each of the twelve days of Christmas. Each clue will reveal the location of a key, and at the end of the game, one of the family will inherit the house itself.
But Lily is there for more than just the game. Her aunt has suggested that the game will also reveal what happened to Lily’s mother all those years ago.
Glorious fun. I loved everything about it. Endgame House, the wonderful cast of characters with their own secrets and reasons for being there, the enigmatic Mrs Castle, the housekeeper and only person in the house not playing the game.
It reminded me of the movie Clue (and of course the game Cluedo) in that there was a lot of people who are suspects in one way or another, moving about the house trying to figure out answers. Huge fun trying to figure out the twelve clues as they’re presented to the players, though I’d have been rubbish at it as I didn’t get any of them!
If you like your locked room mysteries with a side order of tinsel, then this book is perfect. Pop a copy under the tree for your favourite booklover, or maybe for yourself.
Highly recommended.
The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict is published by Zaffre and is out now. Many thanks to Eleanor Stammeijer for the finished hardback copy to review.
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