Murder Most Festive - Moé for Solarpunk Books

304 pages

English language

Published 2020 by Penguin Random House.

ISBN:: 978-1-5291-1329-7

(1 review)

It's Christmas at Westbury Manor and amateur detective Hugh Gaveston must unravel a fiendish mystery...

Christmas Eve, 1938. The Westbury family and assorted friends have gathered for another legendary celebration at their beautiful country house. The champagne flows, the silverware sparkles and upstairs the rooms are ready for their occupants.

But one bed will lie empty that night. On Christmas morning, David Campbell-Scott is found dead in the snow. There's a pistol beside him and only one set of footprints.

Yet something doesn't seem right to amateur sleuth Hugh Gaveston. Campbell-Scott had just returned from overseas with untold wealth - why would he kill himself? Hugh sets out to investigate...

2 editions

nerd teacher [books] reviewed Murder Most Festive by Ada Moncrieff (A Christmas Mystery, #1)

Frustratiningly Obvious

2 stars

Upon starting the book, once you're introduced to all the characters involved, it becomes frustratingly obvious who is going to be the person 'whodunnit'. At some points, you're hoping there will be a small twist and that you'll be wrong, but it keeps getting glaringly obvious with every passing page.

And it's not a fun kind of obviousness, either. Sometimes I can forgive that if there is a wider story or theme at play or if there's a good reason for making the murderer the obvious candidate, but this was just... meh.

I also distinctly feel like the author didn't really care about her characters. I don't think she needs to like them as people, but I do think she needs to care about them as people... and then write them as people. So many of these characters were frustrating caricatures of stereotypes, which is also fine in a specific …

Upon starting the book, once you're introduced to all the characters involved, it becomes frustratingly obvious who is going to be the person 'whodunnit'. At some points, you're hoping there will be a small twist and that you'll be wrong, but it keeps getting glaringly obvious with every passing page.

And it's not a fun kind of obviousness, either. Sometimes I can forgive that if there is a wider story or theme at play or if there's a good reason for making the murderer the obvious candidate, but this was just... meh.

I also distinctly feel like the author didn't really care about her characters. I don't think she needs to like them as people, but I do think she needs to care about them as people... and then write them as people. So many of these characters were frustrating caricatures of stereotypes, which is also fine in a specific context but... Moncrieff doesn't do anything with it. There's no real commentary happening, and even the ending fails to engage with the topics it brings up as anything more than something superficial.

Disappointing, to say the least.