| Publisher | Simon & Schuster UK |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 10 November 2022 |
| ISBN-10 | 1398519820 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1398519824 |
| Format | hardcover |
| Pages | 352 |
| Price | £ 14.99 |
Murder on the Christmas Express
by
When the sleeper train from London to the snowbound Scottish Highlands comes off the rails on Christmas Eve and a body is found in a locked cabin, it’s up to a former Met detective to find the killer before they strike again.
Review
Murder on the Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict is at first sight the perfect Christmas stocking filler. The overnight sleeper train from London is on its way to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands on Christmas Eve. Somewhere beyond Edinburgh, in the deepest mid-winter snow, the train is derailed. Eighteen passengers are trapped and in one of the cabins, locked from the inside, lies a newly minted corpse. So far so good and the author even provides a handy map of the carriages, their occupants and who was supposed to be sleeping where.
Once the train has derailed and the bodies begin to pile up, one of the passengers takes charge. Roz was, until recently, a high-ranking police officer with the Met so she decides to take control of the situation whilst waiting for the local police and fire and rescue services to arrive through the dense snow. Unfortunately, the problem with Roz, as the Poirot figure, is that she is so tightly sandwiched between concern for her daughter and memories of her own estranged mother, to the extent that she is unable to concentrate on the job in hand.
Roz is on her way to Fort William to support her daughter as she gives birth to Roz's first grandchild. But as usual, Roz can't be there when her daughter needs her most and neither mother nor baby are doing well. Roz is constantly and anxiously on the phone to her daughter's female partner, and all this stirs up memories of her fractious relationship with her own mother, especially during her mother's dying days.
On a lighter note, Roz has made a concoction called tablet for the journey, a sort of Scotch whisky-laden fudge from her mother's own recipe book. Roz constantly refers to this recipe book and to tablet and the recipe even appears at the end of the novel.
The 18 suspects are an interesting bunch, but their characterisation is sketchy and I found it quite hard to form an opinion on the identity of the murderer and their motives. But Benedict is bang up to date with the inclusion of same sex couples, a person called Sam who uses the pronoun they, and a famous social media influencer. I learned quite a lot!
Benedict is also a keen quizzer and as well as this being integral to the plot, she includes 16 anagrams of her favourite stories and poems in the text. To my mind this was a distraction and looking for them would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack – so I didn't bother. The author is also a Kate Bush fan and name-checks many of her titles in the text – again, a distraction for me. And there is a Christmas Express pub quiz at the end of the book with an interesting set of questions but yet again it all seemed a bit gimmicky and unnecessary.
A major subplot concerns the repeated abuse of women by one of the main characters. This is a serious subject but its prominent place in what is presented as a traditional locked room whodunit felt slightly off-key. For me, the ending was unsatisfactorily and rather too neatly tied up in tinsel before Benedict wishes us all a Happy Christmas and leaves us with her jolly Christmas quiz and recipe for tablet. As a murder mystery with an initially very promising plot idea, the book leaves much to be desired and felt something of a muddle.
Once the train has derailed and the bodies begin to pile up, one of the passengers takes charge. Roz was, until recently, a high-ranking police officer with the Met so she decides to take control of the situation whilst waiting for the local police and fire and rescue services to arrive through the dense snow. Unfortunately, the problem with Roz, as the Poirot figure, is that she is so tightly sandwiched between concern for her daughter and memories of her own estranged mother, to the extent that she is unable to concentrate on the job in hand.
Roz is on her way to Fort William to support her daughter as she gives birth to Roz's first grandchild. But as usual, Roz can't be there when her daughter needs her most and neither mother nor baby are doing well. Roz is constantly and anxiously on the phone to her daughter's female partner, and all this stirs up memories of her fractious relationship with her own mother, especially during her mother's dying days.
On a lighter note, Roz has made a concoction called tablet for the journey, a sort of Scotch whisky-laden fudge from her mother's own recipe book. Roz constantly refers to this recipe book and to tablet and the recipe even appears at the end of the novel.
The 18 suspects are an interesting bunch, but their characterisation is sketchy and I found it quite hard to form an opinion on the identity of the murderer and their motives. But Benedict is bang up to date with the inclusion of same sex couples, a person called Sam who uses the pronoun they, and a famous social media influencer. I learned quite a lot!
Benedict is also a keen quizzer and as well as this being integral to the plot, she includes 16 anagrams of her favourite stories and poems in the text. To my mind this was a distraction and looking for them would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack – so I didn't bother. The author is also a Kate Bush fan and name-checks many of her titles in the text – again, a distraction for me. And there is a Christmas Express pub quiz at the end of the book with an interesting set of questions but yet again it all seemed a bit gimmicky and unnecessary.
A major subplot concerns the repeated abuse of women by one of the main characters. This is a serious subject but its prominent place in what is presented as a traditional locked room whodunit felt slightly off-key. For me, the ending was unsatisfactorily and rather too neatly tied up in tinsel before Benedict wishes us all a Happy Christmas and leaves us with her jolly Christmas quiz and recipe for tablet. As a murder mystery with an initially very promising plot idea, the book leaves much to be desired and felt something of a muddle.
Reviewed 17 December 2022 by Viv Beeby
