The Christmas murder game

Traditionally, the Armitage family gathers at Endgame House to solve a Christmas puzzle, the prize being an extra present for the winner. Lily Armitage, though she had an affinity for the puzzles as a child, has avoided Endgame House following her mother's death on Boxing Day, 21 years earlier. Now Lily's Aunt Liliana has died, and Lily and her cousins are summoned for one last puzzle. They will be sequestered at the Yorkshire manor from Christmas Eve through the Twelve Days of Christmas and presented with 12 clues to 12 keys, leading to the final prize, the deed to the manor house. Having made her own life in London, Lily is not interested in taking possession of Endgame House, but she is interested in the clues, which her aunt had promised would answer questions about Lily's mother's death. The six cousins and two spouses arrive on a snowy Christmas Eve and are confined to the grounds without access to the outside world. The subterfuge and backbiting begin immediately, escalating to murder. Lush descriptions enhance the tension, with word puzzles within the narrative adding extra entertainment.

It's a snowy Christmas Eve in this fun contemporary British country house mystery from Benedict (The Beauty of Murder as A.K. Benedict), and Lily Armitage, a 33-year-old costume corset maker is heading from her London home to the wilds of Yorkshire and the 17th-century manor known as Endgame House, where she lived as a child. She hasn't set foot in the place since she left it at the age of 12 after her mother's death. She's only returning because her recently deceased aunt and adoptive mother, Liliana Armitage-Feathers, has left a letter for her with the family lawyer in which Liliana begs Lily, as a last request, to participate in the family's traditional Christmas treasure hunt, in which all the Armitage cousins take part. Only this time, the winner will get Endgame House itself, while the other participants will get nothing. Greed-fueled animosity runs high, and it's no surprise when, one by one, the cousins start turning up dead. Puzzle-loving readers will enjoy searching for anagrams of the gifts mentioned in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and for the titles of 12 of the author's favorite country house mysteries embedded in the text. This isn't for those looking for surprising reveals. (Oct.)

A couturier returns to her late aunt's home in Yorkshire for one last Christmas reunion that promises more sorrow than joy. Liliana Armitage-Feathers was always an incorrigible game player. Now that she'd dead, her idea of an appropriate legacy is to hide anagrammatic clues to 12 possible keys to an unknown place where the deeds to Endgame House are hidden in 12 sonnets, each one of which will be made available to her prospective heirs on one of the 12 days of Christmas, with the house to go to the relative who finds the key that unlocks the hiding place. Lily Armitage, a corsetier still grieving her mother, Mariana Armitage, who died under questionable circumstances on Boxing Day 21 years ago, doesn't want her Aunt Liliana's house, but she does want to honor her memory. So she agrees to play along with her cousins Tom and Ronnie and Rachel Armitage, whom she rather likes, and Sara Armitage-Feathers, whom she doesn't much like at all and suspects of murder. As Christmas passes into New Year's and beyond, the clues and keys mount up. So do the casualties, raising real suspicions whether this will be a holiday-themed remake of And Then There Were None. Never fear; enough suspects will remain at the end to make the big reveal moderately surprising, though the bigger surprise is how many felonies end up attributed to how many perpetrators. Just in case this setup isn't artificial enough for you, Benedict piles two more games atop the games her characters play: a dozen hidden anagrams of the gifts of the 12 days of Christmas, and a dozen hidden references to earlier Christmas-themed whodunits. Super brainy in an appropriately superficial way. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.