Let’s face it, if your car breaks down in a snowstorm in the middle of a village in the Yorkshire Dales on Christmas Eve, and a kindly stranger escorts you to the local pub where you find yourself snowed in with a bunch of people who clearly have some tensions between them. And then someone suggests that everyone splits up in the apparently-massive pub to do the annual Scavenger Hunt… there’s going to be a murder, surely?

That’s the situation that Maddie Marlowe, a journalist who was en route to Scotland for Christmas with her parents, finds herself in. Trapped with feuding families and a body with a corkscrew in its neck, can Maddie work out who to trust? Is the local constabulary up to the job of finding the killer, or are they too close to everyone to see the truth?

So, time for another Christmas review, this time from, ahem, Noelle Albright. OK, there’s being Christmassy and then there’s being CHRISTMASSY. Given that the author has other pseudonyms, I’m guessing this isn’t her real name. Not that it affects the book, but it did set off my twee-radar.

Having said that, the book isn’t twee at all. Oh, it’s not blood and entrail-soaked terror either, but it’s not all mince pies, snowmen and falling in love with the male lead either. It’s also, despite what Amazon/the publisher might want you to think, not hilarious. It’s not trying to be, to be fair, but just thought you should know not to expect another Benjamin Stevenson.

All in all, it’s a fun read with an interesting lead character – except when she’s flashing back to a dead body she saw when she was young, a plot that goes nowhere (book two, maybe?) – and the support cast is distinctive, which always helps an old duffer like me.

There’s nothing really in the way of clues – not entire sure how one identifies a murderer by finding a motive that they were mistaken about – but given the killer has a penchant for dressing up as a ghost, it’s appropriate that they stumble into a trap and get caught in the act. Zoiks! And so on…

I’m being a bit harsh because at the end of the day, I enjoyed the book. The prose is fun, the plot keeps moving and the writer does a good job of puncturing expectations – the armchair sleuth will have a certain idea when the lights go out, so they’re going to have a sulk when Maddie voices exactly the same suspicion almost immediately. So much for being clever…

Yes, a fun book, not that Christmassy, and certainly had me turning the pages to see if I’d guessed right.

The Christmas Eve Murders is out now in ebook and hardback from Quercus. Many thanks for the e-copy.