Murder at Christmas – G B Rubin – Grab This Book

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!

I received a review copy from the publishers to allow me to participate in the Blog Tour for Murder at Christmas. My thanks to Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for the opportunity to join this blog tour.

Choose Your Own Adventure!  This was a favourite of mine back in my teenage years. At that time I was hooked on the Fighting Fantasy novels which were the brainchild of Ian Livingston and subsequently Steve Jackson.  Those two authors will certainly feature in my “most read author lists” as I poured over their books many, many times over and my collection ran to forty or fifty titles in the Fighting Fantasy series.  So choosing my own adventure is very much familiar and comfortable ground for me – as such I was delighted to have the opportunity to read a crime novel/whodunnit which also let me make the informed choices and determine the path of the investigation.

G.B. Rubin has delivered a real gem which I am sure readers will enjoy. First the basics – if you read this book cover to cover and in the order it is presented this will be the most confusing experience of your year. However, if you read the opening gambit (helpfully numbered “1” you will be introducted to your character (yes YOU are the detective) and the scene will be set. Actually two scenes are set and you get to decide after six or seven pages of story which of two potential crimes you will find yourself caught up within. Readers will be prompted to turn to section 11 or section 34 (all clearly numbered and easy to find as you ripple through the pages) and from there more story unfolds and you are presented with more investigative choices. It’s hugely entertaining and turned out to be deeply frustrating as it transpires I am NOT blessed with the great deductive mind which I believed may have been the case.  My first venture failed miserably and innocent (maybe innocent) lives were lost as a consequence of poor judgement calls I had made.

But fear not – I am master of Choosing My Own Adventure.  Back to part 1 and we go again – determined not to make the same mistake as I did the last time and…hey why not?…taking on a totally different challenge this time around. Yup more failure at being a detective but more fun at trying.

Described as cozy crime and ideal for Murdle fans – I can 100% agree with ideal for cozy crime fans as scene setting is perfect, characters feel they have been plucked from the Christie/Ngaio Marsh era of Golden Age Crime and dropped into the pages of Murder At Christmas where the seamlessly pick up their stories.  Not quite like a Murdle book though – those books are entirely aimed at the puzzle fan, grids to complete, logial clues to decipher and move on to the next puzzle with a thin link to the previous puzzle to drive on the “story”.   Murder At Christmas is all about the story and it allows the reader to decide how events unfold.  No biro required, no logic problems – just a reader left to rely upon instinct and intutition to work out how an investigator may try to solve a crime, track down clues and deal with suspects.

This is a book which screams “Christmas Gift” for a crime fiction fan (particularly if you cannot be sure what they may have read in the past).  But it also screams “Buy Me For Yourself” to each reader too – it’s a fun, fun addition to anyone’s TBR and the satisfaction of solving the crimes is extremely satisfying.  Well I assume it will be once I FINALLY manage to get the correct outcome.  Oh and the lack of random Goblin fights in Murder at Christmas was a very welcome change from the Choose Your Own Adventure stories Mr Livingston and Mr Jackson used to create back in the 80s 🙂

Murder at Christmas is published by Simon & Schuster and is available in Hardback and digital format. You can order your copy here: https://www.waterstones.com/book/murder-at-christmas-you-solve-the-crime/g-b-rubin/9781398543485