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Sharpen your sleuthing skills and have your magnifying glass at the ready for this interactive festive mystery that casts YOU in the role of the detective – perfect for fans of Murdle looking for their next clever crime fix!
The year is 1932. You are Dr Kinn Tenor, a Scotland Yard pathologist with a sideline in private detection when the boys in blue are stumped. You’re celebrated in the newspapers, but you tend to get the official police’s backs up – they don’t take kindly to being upstaged.
Two days before Christmas, you attend the opening of your friend Johnny McAlister’s ritzy new nightclub, the Golden Star. There you meet his cousin, Melissa Thresh – she is being followed and would like you to identify the culprit. But you have also promised your friend Algy Hurley to visit his family seat in Kent, where some poison-pen letters have been causing unrest.
→ If you travel to Yorkshire with Melissa, you’re caught up in a locked-room murder mystery featuring a cast of dubious friends, relatives and business associates
→ If it’s Hurley Court, you’re embroiled in a country house whodunnit involving an old family ritual and generations of hidden secrets
This is just the first of many choices you must make: will you pursue this thread? Chase the mysterious stranger? Lay a trap for the guilty party? The decisions you make will take you on your own path to the final unmasking of the villain – or failure.
What will you choose? And can you unravel the mystery without losing your festive spirit, your reputation… or your life?
MAKE YOUR CHOICE
TURN THE PAGE
SOLVE THE CRIME!
It's my pleasure to be hosting the blog tour for Murder at Christmas by G.B. Rubin today. Many thanks to Simon & Schuster and Anne Cater for inviting me and for my copy of the novel.
Christmas is made for a Golden Age-style festive murder mystery but Gareth Rubin (writing here as G.B. Rubin) ups the nostalgia stakes still further with Murder at Christmas, a choose your own adventure style story which is bound to appeal to those of us who loved reading role-playing books years ago.
For those not familiar with the format, the premise is simple enough but risks being deliciously frustrating should you (the reader) make the wrong choices. Written in the second person, present tense, you learn at the start of the book that your role is that of Dr Kinn Tenor, police pathologist and celebrated amateur sleuth and you will decide on the course of the investigation throughout. Your first decision comes quickly as you have to choose between accepting a request from an old friend, Algy, to attend a house party at his family home in order to look into a case of poison pen letters, or to stay in London to talk to Melissa Thresh who is apparently being followed. Murder at Christmas isn't written in a linear style and so at the end of each chapter you will be presented with either an explicit direction or at least two choices compelling you to turn to a clearly numbered section either later or earlier in the book. Eventually you might successfully solve the case or alternatively find yourself shamed or worse, a victim of the killer yourself, with the ignominious instruction; 'Now, go back to the beginning at start again.'
I chose to investigate Melissa's case first and was soon caught up in this mystery set aboard a train she has specially chartered to take her and a group of her friends and associates to Yorkshire. With his atmospheric sense of place and pitch-perfect characterisation, G.B. Rubin does a fine job of evoking a party hosted by a pleasure-seeking socialite. However, it's quickly obvious that Melissa and her guests all have secrets and so when one of the party is murdered, anybody on board becomes a potential suspect. I managed to negotiate most of the choices successfully and was feeling quite smug until I steered Kinn Tenor the wrong way and so it was back to the beginning! From here, I decided to take the same steps until I reached the point where I'd made my fatal mistake but the beauty of this book is that it's possible to take a slightly different route to unmask the killer.
After solving the first case, I embarked on the investigation into the poison pen letters at Hurley Court and again was treated to another thoroughly satisfying mystery. This time, a decidedly creepy old family ritual, some dark secrets from the past herald a Christmas morning murder. However, despite the red herrings and list of likely suspects, I avoided the pratfalls this time and solved the murder without having to go back to the start.
Murder at Christmas is such a fun book to read and the cleverly structured stories mean it can be enjoyed more than once. It will undoubtedly appeal to those with fond memories of choosing their own adventures and readers who love a festive puzzle to solve but will also be an original choice of gift for Golden Age crime fiction lovers. Highly recommended as a treat for a loved one or to yourself – go on, it's Christmas and you deserve it!
Murder at Christmas is published by Simon & Schuster, purchasing links can be found here.
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