Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Lady Georgiana Rannoch doesn’t want to spend Christmas in her uncomfortable and drafty family castle, Castle Rannoch, with her brother Binky and sister-in-law, Fig, who can’t stand her, so she jumps at the chance to play hostess at an affluent Christmas party in Tiddleton-under-Lovey for the twelve days of Christmas for the affluent Lady Hawse-Growzley. Lady Hawse-Growzley is hosting a horrible nouveau wealthy American family, a lecherous bachelor, and a couple of middle-class English guests who will pay to hobnob with Lady Rannoch, a royal- even if she’s sixtieth in line for the English throne.

While in this cozy English backwater, Lady Georgiana Rannoch hopes to ponder her precarious financial and familial situation while hosting a traditional English Christmas. She’s joined by her hapless maid, her grandad, and even her mother, who shares a house with Noel Coward as they rehearse his latest play. Everything is shaping up to be a festive and fun Christmas season. However, there is an onslaught of daily accidental deaths between charades and never ending feasts. However, Georgianna isn’t convinced that all these “accidental” deaths are not the work of a serial killer who is using The Twelve Days of Christmas carol as inspiration for their murders.

The Review

I really wanted to like this book because I enjoy books that use Christmas carols to inspire crimes. Still, The Twelve Clues of Christmas fell flat for me because it took Georgiana Rannoch a long time to even realize the murders were happening and then another 100 pages to decide to investigate them.

Her investigation is also paltry, with so much of the book consumed by Georgiana’s preoccupation with what Darcy is doing and whether they can overcome the law to keep them from marrying. This, they won’t romance, doesn’t really work for me because it’s so apparent that they will eventually be together, and at the end of the book, they are no further from achieving their goal. So much of the story is wrapped up in a romance that doesn’t progress or move the characters forward in any way.

So much of the book is begging for a resolution. Will Georgiana get a job and leave her terrible living situation…by the end of this book? No. Will Georgiana and Darcy get engaged and move forward with their romance? Again, no. Will Georgiana investigate the strange deaths? Eventually, even though she is interested in what’s happening around her, she only starts investigating because it angers Darcy, not because she cares about solving the serial murders.

The Twelve Clues of Christmas is a slog and even the fun theme cannot save this book because we spend so little time on each death. A lot of the murders are happening to people in the village that Georgiana either doesn’t know or the murders are mere ornamental filigree before the reader is whisked away to the dead in the water love story or to yet another whine by Georgiana about her home life situation.

The Twelve Clues of Christmas didn’t deliver on the Christmas theme, an exciting mystery, or a dynamic character-driven story.