ARC Review – The Murder Game

From Goodreads:

One house. Nine guests. Endless motives for murder…

In the seaside town of Hamlet Wick, nine guests assemble for a New Year’s Eve party to remember.

The owner of Hamlet Hall has organised a murder mystery evening with a 1920s twist, and everyone has their own part to play.

But the game has barely begun when one guest is found dead – killed by a fatal injury to the head.

With no phone signal and no way out of the house, the others are trapped with a killer in their midst.

Someone is playing by their own rules. And in a close-knit community, old rivalries run deep…

I enjoyed this take on a locked room mystery. I liked how it wove many little mini mysteries in one and slowly revealed the secrets of the town. I liked the balance of the various characters, some I loved some I loved to hate and I think that was the real highlight for me in this book.

I did find that the plot was very slow. This kind of took away from the impact of some of the reveals as you could see them slowly building up and it made it easier to guess where the twists and turns were going to take you so that was a little disappointing. I also felt the grand reveal of Who-dun-it and why was a little lack lustre. It was a shame and it was such an intricate mystery that could have taken so many different routes but I felt a number of the character backstories were kind of ignored and didn’t really get to play out in full and they seemed really interesting.

Overall I enjoyed this book but I felt it just let me down a little. I think because I read a lot of this kind of mystery I could see the patterns play out easier and that is more on me and my reading taste than the authors choice to play with those tropes. I did prefer a Fatal Crossing I thought it was more exciting and drove you to read on more than this book. However, Hindle is a very good writer and I will happily pick up the next book.