The Emporium, the most exclusive toy shop in London, run by its eccentric elderly owner, the maker of the finest hand-crafted treats. On Christmas Eve, a small group of selected shoppers – and one party crasher – have an invite for an exclusive shopping experience – but when the owner disappears and the doors and windows lock, it’s clear this is no Christmas treat.

Someone in the shop knows exactly what secrets the shoppers have kept hidden. Someone who wants those secrets exposed – and revenge for the damage done by them. And it soon becomes clear that this is more than just a toymaker with a grudge…

OK, who had a Christmas-themed cross between And Then There Were None and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory on their new release bingo cards? No? Seriously?

I picked this up, because I really liked Andreina’s first Christmas book, The Twelve Days Of Murder. It’s such a trade now, the Christmas mystery, with some authors specialising in exactly that, and others producing special Christmas entries in their series, some excellent, some distinctly not. I’ve been trying some of them – and I’ve started some and not got very far, because some of them are not desperately interesting. But Andreina is clearly determined to do something different and in such an interesting way.

This book, I should say, is rather bonkers, with the villain’s plot being more than a little over the top. To be fair, the book does go some way to justify the insanity of it all – more than most books do – but that does come towards the end. It was an interesting experience reading this one, trying to figure out how seriously to take the underlying murder plot amid the drugged captives and the animatronic dolls, but the drip-feed of reveals is beautifully paced, keeping the reader hooked as the darkness behind everything slowly comes into focus.

The narration shifts between two distinctly different characters, Merry and Fran, coupled with flashbacks to festive memories involving the other characters that help paint in the background to the big picture. Locked-in-with-the-killer mysteries are difficult to pull off a real surprise in, but this is a genuine surprise. And no, I don’t mean the one pretty guessable bit – there’s a lot more to it than that.

So overall, this was a lot of fun. Strange, yes, but a very satisfying read. Here’s to next Christmas!