Surrey, 1928, the village of Kilston Down. Lord Edgington and his grandson Christopher are visiting for a traditional family Christmas, despite the fact that they really don’t get on with most of them. It’s so much fun, that they soon find themselves desperately hunting for a murder to investigate. The only possibility is an old gossip who has just died of natural causes but even the “great” detective can’t find anything suspicious about it.

And then someone else dies in similar circumstances. With traces of arsenic discovered, it becomes clear that the two deaths are linked – but how on earth could the poison have been delivered?

HINT: Read the title of the book…

I read a book by the same author, Murder At Everham Hall, which is from a parallel series to this. The lead character, Marius Quin, in that one name-dropped Edgington, if I recall correctly, and the favour is returned here. I did rather enjoy that one, in part due to the banter between the two lead characters. There’s sparring here as well between the leads, Edgington and Christopher, mostly around who is the better detective, but I didn’t feel it worked as well. I felt that it assumed familiarity with the development of their relationship, a familiarity that, having read just one short story featuring Edgington, I didn’t have.

It would seem that Christopher’s story and their relationship has been building over the fifteen books (and a novella or two and a couple of “Lord Edgington Abroad” titles) and I felt a bit like that I was coming in late to it. With two semi-competent sleuths, it makes it a little harder to spot who is supposed to be the great detective and who is the Watson. I know that’s supposed to be the point here, but the core problem that I found with this one is that there’s not a lot of deduction going on.

Lord Edgington is supposed to be a great detective, but he mostly seems to spend his time making accusations at people to see if they’ll confess. It’s Christopher who spots the murder weapon well past the half way point. And then at the end of the book, they both accuse different people of the murder, and thankfully one of them gets it right. There is one clue that I spotted – which, to be fair, was quite clever – but the “winning” sleuth only seems to mention it as an afterthought.

All in all, I didn’t get as much out of this as I’d hoped from the opening section. The humour amused me early on – I really like the idea of the sleuth discovering a murder by desperately investigating any available dead body to avoid a Christmas Party from hell – but there were diminishing returns on it, I’m afraid. I found myself slogging through the book at times to get to the denouement.

One part is, I think, missing the sense of camaraderie that has been developed between Edgington and Christopher over the books, as he has developed into his protégé, but the fact that a lot of the investigating is basically accusing people of murder or something else and then having them tell you their alibi really puts a mark in the “Con” column.

I think one thing overall sums the book up for me. As I said, at the end, Edgington and Christopher accuse different people of the murder and one of them is announced as the actual guilty party and taken away. I was waiting at that point for the “real” solution to be unveiled, the spot where the sleuths realise the importance of a clue they’d overlooked and the true cunning villain is unveiled. The real solution wasn’t that interesting and the incorrect accusation was odd because the crucial aspect of the false solution really should have been mentioned as a possibility earlier in the narrative.

But there was no grand reveal, just a Christmas dinner. And that just made me feel that this one was a bit of a turkey…

Have you read it? Amazon readers seem to love it, so who knows? Maybe I should head back to the start of the series, or dip back into the Marius Quin stories…