Alexandra Benedict
Simon & Schuster, 6 November 2026
Available as: HB, 304pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781398532212
Simon & Schuster, 6 November 2026
Available as: HB, 304pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781398532212
I'm grateful to the publisher for giving me access to an advance e-copy of The Christmas Cracker Killer to consider for review.
Christmas is all about tradition, and one of my favourite traditions is to read a puzzle thriller from Alexandra Benedict. Her latest, The Christmas Cracker Killer, is set in a remote (but luxury!) hotel on a Scottish island, where a bunch of guests are stranded over the festive season - with a killer among them.
The book features Edie O’Sullivan, crossword setter and amateur detective, her partner Riga, and her adopted grandson Sean, who we met in The Christmas Jigsaw Murders. This time they're off home turf as winners of coveted places at the launch of the Aster Castle Hotel. But someone, it seems, wants to launch a rather different enterprise - one involving murder and mayhem...
The Christmas Cracker Killer is a perfect slice of cosy Christmas crime, with a varied and suspicious cast of guests assembled to attract guilt (and death). Benedict conveys the different personalities of this crew brilliantly, wasting no time, as they arrive on the hotel's yacht, in sketching personalities and animosities, hinting at dark secrets, and giving fragments of history. We sympathise, for example, with Mara, the manager of the hotel, who's rather put-upon by her parents, the main investors; we boo at the unpleasant banker and the savage hotel reviewer; we note the tensions between some guests, and the hints of mystery attached to others.
Most of all, we thrill at the sections written from the killer's point of view (and reread them, looking for clues as to their identity).
Then, even before the first death, the puzzles erupt, with potential clues appearing in crackers as Benedict hints at who the killer will be, while scattering red herrings (literally - "swimming fish" play a big part here). She's also warned us that her own puzzles are contained in the text (some of them have answers at the end) underlying the main theme.
The action proceeds at a good pace with crime story cliches both fulfilled and subverted (I loved the closing reveal of the killer's identity) and, suitably for Christmas, a hint of the ghost story.
Necessarily this book foregrounds the glitzy guests, the so carefully curated jolliness and the Christmas cheer laid on by the bucketful. (The descriptions of the food made me hungry!) But it also gives us the other side of things - the hard working staff attempting to deliver a luxury experience, even as things go badly, scarily wrong (it's good to see that hard work recognised). However, when all is said and done, it's down to Edie and Sean to solve the crime and stop the killer. Doing that requires a delve into the pasts of everyone on the island, as well as the killer's clues. But as Edie and Riga are among the guests, they may not be the impartial observers we expect - the killer may have business with them.
As well as enjoying Christmas crime, I also enjoy stories set in hotels slightly out of season (is that weird or just niche?) There's something about a hotel as backdrop that can be both familiar - hotels have lots of similarities - and strange - places that should be public, bustling, are a bit uncanny when mostly empty, I think? And once normality is shattered by a killing, everything is different. It can make for an atmospheric and chewy story and Benedict makes full use of that.
Strongly recommended.
For more information about The Christmas Cracker Killer, see the publisher's website here.