Psychological thriller set around BATON ROUGE, Louisiana
A book where you solve the crime (KENT and YORKSHIRE)
4th November 2025
Murder at Christmas by G B Rubin, a book where you solve the crime – Kent and Yorkshire 1932.
The reader turns sleuth.
You are not only the reader but also Dr Kinn Tenor, police pathologist and celebrated detective. You have a job to do. The first chapter – or “section” – highlights the fame and competency of your character (in other words, you learn who you are), and you have a decision to make. You are committed to spending Christmas at Hurley Court in Kent, where you are caught up in a whodunnit. But you are also tempted to explore the plight of Melissa, a member of the social set, who believes she is being followed (or “tailed”) by someone who was intent on running her down the day before. This avenue will take you to Yorkshire.
Which is it to be?
I randomly plump for Melissa’s story and soon, together with several other in the social set, I was boarding a train at King’s Cross, heading for York (“noble England with a Viking heart”), with an entertainer ready to get everyone into the festive spirit. The party has a few hours to buy Christmas presents in the city, to explore, drink and make merry until the train is due to make the return journey, leaving at 7pm. However, things take a macabre turn, murder and mayhem ensue.
After the opening section you are guided to various sections depending on which of the two stories you have chosen.
You embark on your trail of choice, plumping for 1 of 2 options at the end of each section to move the story on. You skip back and forth through the book in the hope that your sleuthing expertise will reward you with a welcome outcome. But this is not inevitable (I shall say no more, suffice it to say that, in my own case, following the ‘right’ clues is perhaps not my natural forte!).
The two stories are headed by either the image of a house or of a train to ensure the reader is on the right track (no pun intended). The book itself is a robust yet lightweight hardback, indeed, it needs to be well constructed as there is a lot of flipping, and by the end of the detection marathon, the book will have taken a bit of a battering. I would struggle to see how well this would work on Kindle and its equivalents.
This is good, light fun for Christmas and would make a great present for readers who love the Golden Age and like a mystery that is a bit different and challenging in a unique way. I imagine during production of the book, there was quite an editing feat going to make sure all the sections married up correctly!
Of course, once you have completed and achieved the best outcome with one story, you can then return to the opening chapter and commence with the other story. So you have two stories for the price of one!
Tina for the TripFiction Team
Join team TripFiction on Social Media:
Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction) and BlueSky(tripfiction.bsky.social) and Threads (@tripfiction)
Please wait...
