This was an easy to read crime book. I loved the fact that it was set at Christmas so was festive, but not your typical Christmas read. James has moved with wife Annie to an idealic village and all seems boring and safe. That is until a Christmas package turns up on their door with a chilling Christmas card. 12 days and 12 murders.... there are a few twists and turns to keep you interested with enough clues to solve the mystery by the end. The perfect winter story!

I love the idea of a festive thriller and this was the first one I have read. This follows the character of Detective Inspector James Walker, who has had to move from London to the ‘quiet’ countryside due to threats from a case he was involved with.

He soon discovers the area is far from quiet, when murders start happening and the killer threatens that there will be 12, to match the 12 days of Christmas. The book then follows the detective trying to work out who the killer is, and we get introduced to lots of characters from the village, so we are left to guess who it might be.

I gave this one 3.5 stars, I enjoyed it and it is definitely my kind of book. The reason I didn’t give it 5 was because I thought there was quite a slow build up at the start, and we have to wait a while for the murders and the action to start happening. Having said that it did build up the back story of the characters to help us try and guess who the killer was.

I didn’t actually guess the killer, and love it when that happens! It’s much better having a surprise and trying to think back if there were any clues it was them.

I did like the ending but thought it was a little rushed, which is another reason I didn’t give 5 stars. I would recommend this to any thriller lover who likes a good whodunnit mystery!

Thank you to @netgalley for my free digital copy in exchange for an honest review!

DI James Walker and his wife, Annie, have relocated from London, to the sleepy Cumbrian village of Kirkby Abbey. The reasons for their move up north are complicated but each are looking forward to spending time renovating the house which once belonged to Annie's mother.

Life seems to be finally on an even keel for them as James gets used to his new policing role, that is until a gruesome warning turns up on their doorstep. James suddenly finds that he is leading a murder investigation which gets more and more complicated as Christmas approaches, and as the weather closes in, and a huge snow storm hits with a vengeance, it all makes for a chilly and tense atmosphere.

I enjoyed reading this Christmas whodunit as there is certainly enough going on to maintain interest and there's a nice amount of tension with a few red herrings thrown in for good measure. I did suss out the perpetrator quite early on but that was ok and didn't spoil my enjoyment of this festive murder mystery.

The Christmas Killer is the first in a new series of crime novels by this experienced crime writer. I look forward to catching up with DI James Walker in future stories.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗺𝗮𝘀 𝗸𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿' - 𝗔𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝗣𝗶𝗻𝗲

Another night with next to no sleep, but this was well worth staying up for! This is the debut novel from the pen of Alex Pine & is the first in his DI James Walker series.

You don't normally find many thrillers set around the Christmas period so it made a change. This was a slow burning yet compelling thriller, that kept you second guessing every step of the way. Even toward the end I still had no clue who was the killer.

Someone's on a killing spree & has decided the 12 days of Christmas are going to be a little bit different this year, but who are they & what are their motives?

Many thanks to Netgalley for my ARC in return for my honest review.

𝗜 𝗴𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸 𝗮 5 🌟 𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴.

This was an interesting book to read. The plot is an intriguing one - someone plans to kill 12 people over the 12 days of Christmas. They claim that all of these victims deserve to die. And they are informing the police of their plans.

It immediately raises questions of what kind of secrets and scandals can be going on in the very small village in which the story is set.

Initially I thought that I didn't like this book, mainly because of the writing style. At times I found it to be a little wooden and clunky. I also felt that it dives into the story very fast, and I didn't feel I had a lot of time to get to know the characters.

But as I kept reading, I found that I did actually want to know what happened and who the murderer was. And although the characters maybe could have been developed better, they were believable and interesting, and I found I wanted to know how things turned out for them too.

I think maybe it is a positive that the story gets going quickly, and you get to know the characters along the way. It may be a personal preference that I found this a little irritating at first - probably many others wouldn't.

The plot means that lots of different stories are intertwined and it is helpful for introducing different characters to the reader. And everyone has backstory that it's interesting to discover. It helps that Annie, one of the main characters, used to live in the village where the story is set, and so she knows people from her past too.

This isn't a very demanding book, and there are lots of books that I have read that I would say are better written. But all in all, it was a pleasant read and a good mystery for the winter months.

Well, I knew who the killer was straight away... BUT that's only because I accused everyone! I kept thinking, it's you, its definitely you, then 10 pages later, no it's not them, it's you! So on and so on! The book kept me gripped, kept me awake reading until 3.30 in the morning and got me picking it up even if I only had time for one page! Not read a book by this author before but I will definitely look out for books by them from now on.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers and the author for the privilege to read this book for my honest opinion

Promising premise - small Cumbrian village with all the usual characters for a whodunnit - someone wants to punish the sinners against a twelve days of Christmas countdown. As an ex catholic I found the concepts of confession and retribution interesting if not totally convincing.

I enjoyed this Christmas thriller. ‘tis the season to read anything holiday related. This book was a nice little break of the fluffy we’re all in love story line. You definitely have a lot of characters to keep track of but I believe the story is told in such a way that it wasn’t difficult.

After relocating from London to a quiet village DI Walker and his wife Annie thought they were on for a quieter life. They weren't to know that a deadly message would be left for Walker with a threat of killing 12 people as in the 12 days of Christmas.

I really enjoyed this book and thought the setting was beautifully described with some colourful characters living there.

My only negative was I thought the ending seemed rushed but other than that I thought this was a very good read. If this is to be the start of a new series I will definitely be reading more.

Annie and James Walker move back to Cumbria to get away from their life in London but James finds that policing in the Lakes is no easier than where he is now, indeed things are a lot closer to home than he would like them to be.

To be honest, I'm just not a fan of this book. The characters are boring, it's supposed to be a thriller but it just isn't and, small point maybe, but there is gratuitous swearing. I didn't love it anyway but the writing isn't great and the plot very thin - I could guess who the murdered would be as soon as I met them but the murders don't even start until halfway through the book.

Generally disappointing and not one I would recommend.

I loved this. I read the sampler in the summer and knew then that I would need to read the full book and this didnt disappoint.
It kept me gripped and guessing and a brilliant read.

I really enjoyed this book and getting to know the characters and look forward to reading more books in the series. I did work out who the killer was and did feel the pace slowed down at the last 20%

This book has a really interesting premise- a serial killer who promises to kill 12 people in the run up to Christmas in the fictional village of Kirkby Abbey in Cumbria. Unfortunately, the writing isn't great, which made it quite awkard to read at times. The dialogue is particularly stilted- it isn't that different from the rest of the prose, so no human would ever speak in that way.

One thing that stuck out to me was a depiction of female on male violence fairly early on in the book, witnessed by the main character James, a police officer. She's not arrested for assaulting him, it's not even commented on. If the genders were reversed, he would have been in the back of a police van. It's such a double standard, and i'm bored of seeing it in media.

Every single character in this book is completely flat and one-dimensional, so it's difficult to care about them being in danger. James is passive in solving the main conflict in the book, he just happens to be in the right place at the right time- I figured out who the killer was way before he did.

Something a bit different for this time of year but it was an excellent read that had me gripped from start to finish.

I enjoyed this mystery as quite light reading. I found it interesting as I am pretty certain that I recognised the village in the story. Certainly it is based loosely on the village I am familiar with. I always enjoyed a story that you are able to "see" in your mind's eye. For once I guessed the murderer.

I was really looking forward to this one as a fun transition from my favourite spooky reads, right into fun Holiday-themed stories. The premise sounds great, with a detective receiving a threat of 12 murders in 12 days over the Holidays....but unfortunately, this novel failed to deliver. I struggled immensely with this read, and I just could not get into it. There was no real suspense, the characters were flat, and the writing was not quite my style. I wish I could have liked this one more, but unfortunately, this one turned into a DNF.

I must confess that this novel wasn't quite what I'd hoped for.

The set up is fun, the idea of a killer planning a murder for each day of the 12 days of Christmas in a small community as the fear ramps up is a good one and I had high hopes for this, especially since I like books about Christmas and it's quite rare these days to find ones that aren't Romance novels.

There are good parts about this book, some of the characterisations are quite fun, and there is a sense of never quite knowing who can be trusted and who can't, and it's not obvious who the killer is for a little while (although with such a small cast with this being set in a small community in the lake district there aren't too many obvious culprits). The village feels well constructed. The motive for the murders when it comes is quite believable too,.

The problems though are many, the main one is that it feels rushed, certainly towards the end. The reveal of the killer comes out of nowhere and doesn't really feel like the detective has actually done any sleuthing to solve the crime. The characters are not too well drawn, we meet a few of them, but apart from being angry at being accused of crimes they haven't committed we don''t get any depth to them, and thus it's hard to care what happens to them. The wife of the main character feels a little throwaway, and there's a sub plot with a family relative which whilst it could be interesting sort of peters away towards the end of the book and doesn't really have any importance in the end. There is also a plot device at the beginning to move the main characters from London to the North which ends up being nothing more than that, I think it's supposed to be a red herring but ends up being pointless.

It's a shame that the book never really goes anywhere, it rushes along at a good pace and is easy to read, but the tension that should be there for a novel like this never really get's going - there isn't enough killing or build up around the fright the community feels to really ramp it up - and so in the end I lost interest quite quickly.

James, a detective in the Metropolitan police, and his wife, Annie decide to move to the Lake District, to live in Annie’s old family house, in search of a quieter life. Within a few days of their arrival, a serial killer starts a campaign to rid the village of those who deserve to die. A host of interesting characters provide the victims and suspects alike.

Writing a successful crime novel requires a closed set and the small Cumbrian village, cut off from the outside world by heavy snowfall, provides the perfect setting. However it is rather far fetched to believe that the local detective and his wife would have connections to everyone involved in this tale. The characters are rather one dimensional and it’s unlikely that a small village school, with only 22 pupils, would have a Headteacher, deputy head and at least one other teacher. I am rubbish at picking up clues but even I worked out who the killer was before the detective!!

This novel is a great read – the pacing is comfortable, it is well-plotted and the story is intriguing.

DI James Walker is ready for a quiet family Christmas in the sleepy village of Kirkby Abbey, Cumbria. He and his wife Annie have recently relocated to the small remote village and it's a big change from London .When he opens an early Christmas present that was left on his doorstep, there is a gruesome surprise and a note inside the package - twelve days, twelve murders - and it isn't long before the first body is found, frozen in the snow...

I always welcome a new police procedural series... especially when it begins with shedloads of suspense that steadily increases throughout. There was never a dull moment in this dark and atmospheric story and I was riveted from start to finish. The characters were solidly drawn, lending credibility to the festive mystery/ thriller. I look forward to seeing more of DI Walker in future instalments.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel from Avon Books via NetGalley at my request and this review is my own unbiased opinion.

Who doesn’t love a snowed in murder mystery set at Christmas? Here is a good one to get you through some of these cold nights. DI James Walker has moved from the big city to village life in Kendal. Coming home one night he finds a package that he thinks is a present and gets a gross surprise instead. There’s also a card inside saying that 12 people will be killed in 12 Days. Can he find the killer before all of these people die? Oh and did I mention that there is a blizzard coming? There are lots of twists and turns in this wonderful whodunit. This is a very atmospheric read. And I recommend it.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book that I received from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.