Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife - Martin Edwards ****

By Brian Clegg

Starting this book by Martin Edwards can be a touch intimidating as it explicitly challenges the reader to solve two mysteries and a couple of cipher-like puzzles – but there’s no need to panic as it’s perfectly readable without putting yourself out to do so.

Six characters are invited to a remote retreat for Christmas in the ‘north Pennines’. They are soon trapped there by heavy snowfall – their task is to solve a murder mystery game. But before long, real people start to die.

Information is gradually added to solve the mystery game, from a combination of background material, journals written by two of the characters, and the action that takes place amongst those who run the Midwinter Trust retreat. To begin with this is distinctly frustrating as those who work at the Trust are hiding a dark secret from five years earlier, which they dance around in conversation at great length without revealing exactly what they are talking about. Eventually, though, it all starts to come out – and this is where the book really takes off, both as a murder mystery and with a fair amount of tension as the body count increases.

One puzzling thing that is never really explained is that everyone seems to go along with the Trust staff in not reporting the (real) murders to the authorities – the police are never involved. While the staff may have a reason for this, the guests would surely insist on it – and although they don’t have their phones, we are told about someone making a call on a mobile phone in the past: it’s hard to imagine that the guests wouldn’t rebel and demand that the police are called.

While not working at the level of sophistication of a Janice Hallett book in handling secondary material, Edwards does a good job of bringing it in – for example the Midwinter Trust’s website and an anonymous history, along with various clues provided for the mystery game. This is a satisfying, Christmas-set novel with a nicely complex plot and a number of twists. Fun.

You can buy Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.