Published By: Michael Joseph
Pages: 496
Released On: 05/11/2026
It is December 1884, and we have a murder to solve. Come, my friend – follow me, for we have much to see.
First, a house: a brand-new country estate, with all the latest technological innovations – electric light-bulbs, running water, dumb-waiters, hydraulic lifts.
Second, a family: celebrated inventor Sir Russell Morgan, his grown-up children, his beautiful new wife.
Next, their guests: the great and the good (well, the rich), dressed in all their finery, eager to celebrate Christmas at Clifftop House.
And finally: a body – for what festive mystery would be complete without one? Here lies one of the servants, laid out beneath the Christmas-tree, his hands covered in burns.
The police dismiss his death as an accident, but our heroine, Millie – kitchenmaid and keen reader of sensation novels – is not so sure. Christmas Day is fast approaching. Can the mystery be solved before the killer strikes again?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Michael Joseph for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I was wary of this because it was much longer than I prefer a book to be, but it was a Christmas thriller which are two of my favourite things. And the idea of a murder at Christmas and in a big manor house with the upstairs/downstairs vibe, just promised me so much.
One issue for me is that, at least in the beginning, there’s a lot of in-depth detail and description of each character. Now, I don’t mind character descriptions because I like to know who I’m imagining, but because there were so many characters, these descriptions went on for several pages and I found that there was just too much information and I’m not sure it was all needed. Perhaps some of it could have been worked throughout the book, instead of all at the start.
It’s a long book, I won’t lie about that, and there were some times where it was a bit too slow, but I think overall it’s a good mix of slower and quicker its. It did take a while to get through, because the way it’s written and with al the detail, it was a lot to remember and memory is not my strong point. But it was equally addictive and I couldn’t wait to find out who did it, but I would have liked it to have been a little easier to get through.
When I read books like this, I can’t help but compare them to Agatha Christie and I know that’s a high bar to reach. And whilst this doesn’t necessarily reach those heights, it does give me all that Christie does and it feels very nostalgic to that golden age mystery novel.
It’s bizarre because it’s written as if the narrator is talking directly to the reader, with things like, “Let me take you into this room” kind of thing. I don’t think I’d like that but it was an impressive way of drawing the reader into the story. It almost felt like they were the Ghost of Christmas Past, which as a A Christmas Carol fan and collector, I was very pleased with.
There are lots of footnotes and whilst they are fun to read and add a little something extra to the story, they’re not essential so don’t feel as if you have to read them if footnotes aren’t your kind of thing.
It has really long chapters and for me, I would have preferred shorter more snappy chapters, as I think they work best in a whodunnit.
I am notoriously terrible at working out whodunnits so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I didn’t work this one out. It was hidden in a very clever way and so the big reveal was worth it.
I read this at the tail end of summer and whilst it was enjoyable then, I can imagine it’ll be even better when read in the dark of a December evening.
There’s an awful lot to like about this, but for me, they get tempered down by the page length and the intense descriptions. I think if it had been a bit shorter, a bit….um…I still wanted description because I think it’s necessary to set scenes and characters, but a little less, or used a bit more sparingly, and this really could have been tip top thanks to the positive aspects.
