Review - The Christmas Cracker Killer by Alexandra Benedict

The Christmas Cracker Killer

Alexandra Benedict
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.

#Review - The Christmas Jigsaw Murders by Alexandra Benedict

The Christmas Jigsaw Murders
Alexandra Benedict
Simon & Schuster, 9 November 2023
Available as: HB, 352pp, audio, e   
Source: Purchased
ISBN(HB): 9781398525375

I really enjoyed Alexandra Benedict's Murder on the Christmas Express so once I had completed that trip, I made sure to collect all the pieces for this new mystery.

And it is a mystery in several senses. 

A week before Christmas, misanthropic crossword-puzzle setter Edie O’Sullivan receives a present - a handful of jigsaw pieces making up part of a murder scene. It's accompanied by a threat - Edie has been set a challenge, to prevent a series of murders which will climax on Christmas Eve.

Edie accepts the challenge, to the chagrin of her nephew Sean who, as a young Detective Sergeant, doesn't want her trampling all over the case (either metaphorically or - because Edie seems to know no law - literally, once the bodies start turning up).

The killer, "Rest in Pieces" seems to have a particular hatred of Edie, but is also happy to commit mayhem across Weymouth, causing panic and dismay among the Christmas lights and tinsel. What do they want, and can they be stopped?

This was a fun and enjoyable book, the more so - oddly perhaps? - because Edie is actually a thoroughly dislikable character. (She knows this - asked 'How many people do you p*** off every day?' Edie response is simple: 'Sure. I'm an a******e.' Admittedly as the story proceeds we learn more about what she's suffered, which goes some way to make her more sympathetic, but her behaviour is simply outrageous. Not suffering fools gladly, and rampaging across police business, is only part of it. She insults everyone she meets, behaves obnoxiously, and goes out of her way to be as disagreeable as she can. If somebody is targeting her, it's hardly surprising, and the list of suspects isn't going to be short. 

How Edie resolves this, what it might cost her, and where in her shady past she'll need to go to find the resources she needs in this crisis - well, read the book if you want to find out! It's frankly a puzzle bt one that Benedict pulls off triumphantly. 

And as I said above, that's not the only puzzle. Hidden in the story are multiple challenges for the reader, including anagrams and song titles (some of which I managed to solve, but mostly not - the story is so good and so distracting!) It's also got a pleasingly Dickensian (while modern) affect, signalled by the opening words: 'No one was dead, not to begin with.' Indeed there's perhaps a touch of the Miss Havisham about Edie - if Miss H was prone to solve murder mysteries.

All in all, immense fun.

For more information about The Christmas Jigsaw Murders, see the publisher's website here -