Review – Murder Most Festive

Posted January 1, 2023 by Nicky in Uncategorized / 2 Comments

Cover of Murder Most Festive, by Ada MoncrieffMurder Most Festive, Ada Moncrieff

I found Murder Most Festive a really enjoyable quick read — maybe not something I’d come back to, but definitely a fun way to while away the last day of the year. In the best Christmas mystery tradition, most of the characters aren’t great people, the victim included, and the flawed nature of family is well on display… but there are a few highlights, like Lady Westbury (far from perfect, but kind, and brave at a particular crucial moment) and Hugh Gaveston. Lydia, too, has an interesting development, finally realising that she’s been shutting her eyes to something she should act upon, and goes ahead.

I don’t agree with people who criticise mysteries for the killer being obvious early on; I chose a character to suspect early on, and I was quite right too — in part just because I’ve read a lot of mysteries, and seen a lot of the tricks in the book, and I keep my eyes open and remember that everything is potentially significant and it’s often the most unexpected character, the one with no apparent motive, who has done the deed.

But a mystery isn’t all about the whodunnit, anyway: it’s also about the howdunnit and the whydunnit, and sometimes the when and even wheredunnit. (Dorothy L. Sayers’ Whose Body?, for example, is all of those things!) And even after all that, sometimes it’s just the howdiscoverit and howtoproveit — and even after that, there’s just the characters and how they behave to each other, how they react to being under suspicion, etc.

All this to say: I don’t think Murder Most Festive is the best mystery novel I’ve ever read, or a favourite that’s likely to stick with me, and it didn’t have me in great suspense… but it was entertaining, and sometimes that’s all we need to ask of a book.

Rating: 4/5

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2 responses to “Review – Murder Most Festive

  1. Faranae

    I agree that it’s silly to reduce the mystery genre to “whodunnit”. If that’s the book’s aim and it fails at it, then sure it’s a valid criticism, but plenty of mysteries aren’t trying to hide the who at all. It’s not books, but look at Columbo – it’s entirely about the procedure of our hero solving the case, and half the time he’s got a very good hunch from the beginning. Indeed, some of the best episodes have only one suspect, Columbo is never really in doubt, but he still has to prove his case.

    • Hmm, yes, I didn’t phrase what I meant quite right — more like I meant that I don’t think it’s right to reduce (most) mysteries to just the whodunnit and whether you can guess it or not. (And in fact one of the “rules” for Golden Age crime fiction is that the reader should be able to guess the murderer! Inasfar as they were really rules, of course.) Like I figured out the whodunnit in this one, and only slightly later a guess at the whydunnit, but that doesn’t ruin the story because there are still people being people, and how they’re gonna figure things out…

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