The Crossed Keys Chronicle

Murder Most Haunted

Murder Most Haunted

This review is the first of a few books that have a similar theme, Christmas time murders! Itā€™s a well documented, but maybe not remembered these days, fact that the Christmas season used to be the spooky season of the year. Especially back in the Victorian era, Christmas, due to itā€™s proximity to the Winter Solstice and the shortest day of the year, was thought to be the time when the veil between worlds was at itā€™s thinnest and ghost stories reigned supreme. These days with the prevalence of Halloween as the center of all things ghostly, Christmas has come into it's own as often the setting for a good cozy murder mystery, such as the one Iā€™m reviewing here, Murder Most Haunted by Emma Mason.

As the story begins weā€™re introduced to DS Midge McGowan on the day of her retirement from the police force after 30 years of dedicated service of mainly overlooking the evidence department. As a retirement gift sheā€™s presented with a voucher for a free Haunted Christmas Weekend at the famous Atherton Hall. She reluctantly agrees to go with the convincing of her partner Birdie. Midge is joined on the trip by a number of characters including an aged pop-star, a haunted podcast creator and a fickle husband and wife duo. They all have their cell phones confiscated and are loaded up on a bus with a broken toilet.

Upon reaching the house, the group participates in a seance to set the haunted mood for the weekend. Not long after though, due to a combination of being snowed in and the house being in the center of military artillery practice, the group of adventurers canā€™t leave Atherton Hall. On the second day of the trip, when the organizer of the trip turns up dead in a locked room, they also canā€™t call for help due to their lack of cell phones.

I will admit I didnā€™t see some of the final twists coming, but from everything I can tell the writing always played fair with the reveals. A number of innocuous early details did end up factoring in the final reveal of the killer. While I did think the solution was a good twist, ultimately I thought the whole scenario was a bit of a downer and while the case was obviously successfully resolved, I didnā€™t feel the normal catharsis I do at the end of a typical murder mystery.

It did feel like they were setting the stage for future mysteries featuring this protagonist. Iā€™ll be interested to see if the author is capable of pulling off more stories featuring Midge when the action isnā€™t so directly related to her. Maybe Mason will decide to move onto a different holiday next time, a nice Valentineā€™s Day murder perhaps?