This adorable little cozy mystery is perfect anyone interested in Christmas or the holiday season. It will keep you entertained and intrigued and guessing until the very end. I loved trying to guess the plot in the story in the culprit and overall had a great time reading it I would highly recommend this if you’re into cozy mysteries of any sort and want a quick escape from the real world.

It is Christmas Eve in an English countryside and the Westbury's are having a holiday celebration in their mansion.
A guest is found dead, who has recently returned from abroad with a heftly bit of money,

Hugh is an amateur sleuth and he works to solve the crime.

This isn't my favorite book. It is too much a book from a rather cookie cutter template.
It is, however, fun to read a Christmas mystery.

This was an unusual murder mystery in that it was set at Christmas. The story revolves around three grown children and their animosity toward each other. There was much more harsh words and picking at each other than celebrating and suddenly, a dead body. With a bumbling police officer and too much interference by the actual murderer, all the happy holiday revelers begin to suspect each other. It take several twists and terns until one of the guests uses his sleuthing ability to finally unmask the killer. This was not one of my favorite books but it was an enjoyable read. The pace was generally good and the characters were believable. There was just something that seemed off about the whole concept.

Murder Most Festive is a modern Golden Age style country house mystery by Ada Moncrieff. Released 12th Oct 2021 by Poisoned Pen Press, it's 288 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately; it makes it so easy to find information with the search function.

This is a lighthearted historical country house mystery set in 1938 on the cusp of WW2, in Sussex. The author has peopled the scenes with a selection of characters of various backgrounds and levels of wealth, sprinkled in a murder, lots of secrets, and stirred well.

It's banter filled and not always in a good way. It hearkens back to the days of witty repartee drawing room comedies of the stage. I honestly found much of the dialogue forced and found myself (after a while) reading the lines as if they were read by actors in a play which lent a frenetic quality to the banter, but did nothing for the narrative as a whole. Some of the characters frankly irritated me (lookin' at you, Stephen & Lydia), which also cut into my enjoyment.

The mystery, resolution, and denouement are fairly well constructed, if straightforward and heavily foreshadowed. It's the dialogue and relentlessly, almost frenetically, "witty" writing which I found somewhat wearying. I would recommend it to die-hard fans of period mysteries, but this book in particular won't be for all readers. There were also several anachronistic (modern) phrases and constructions which threw my suspension of disbelief out the window.

Three and a half stars. It's a very very light read and will entertain folks who enjoy golden age country house mysteries.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Murder Most Festive by Ada Moncrieff

The perfect cozy Xmas murder mystery. Imagine being stuck indoors, with your family, waiting for something to happen, And then disaster strikes.

This was a great book. Filled with crime, murder, Xmas. Secrets abound. But our amateur sleuth figured it out. Abundance of dignified characters. {Even though one was a murderer.]. I recommend this book.

Murder Most Festive was a difficult book to get into. The characters are somewhat annoying, but sometimes humorous. The author's writing style and choice of words left a little to be desired, but if the reader can get through the first four or five chapters, it is a book worth reading.

The setting is Christmas, 1938, and the family of Lord and Lady Westbury have gathered at the manor. Lady Westbury has invited several friends to join them for the holiday. It becomes clear rather quickly that the guests, including siblings Lydia, Edward and Stephen do not really care for each other. One of the guests who seems to be particularly unliked by Edward but is Lydia's godfather, is found dead in the snow on Christmas morning. The local constabulary quickly rule it suicide however Hugh Gaveston, a family friend and amateur sleuth, feels something is not right with this ruling, Hugh sets out to investigate and in the end determines the guest was murdered.

I almost gave up on the book after the first few chapters, but carried on after the crime was committed and Hugh 'got involved' in the investigation. The book was worth reading in the end and I would give another book by Ms. Moncrieff a try.

This cozy was charming and atmospheric. The twists along the way seemed “just right”and not too outlandish while there was something comforting in my hunch being correct. It was obviously unobvious but I enjoyed that aspect.

This was written in the vernacular of the times which I can see might annoy some readers and there were some unlikable characters with quite harsh tongues who made me wince. Still, it was a quick Christmas cozy murder that was transporting and satisfying to read.

I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book. All views expressed are my own.

I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Amateur sleuth, High Gaveston, is looking forward to a simple holiday with friends in their country house. When a fellow guest is discovered dead on the holiest of days, he investigates the possible suicide and discovers the suspect list is long and difficult to manage if it's murder.
Highly entertaining crime , with quirky and irritating characters. Well developed plot. The language is intelligent and wordy which adds to the fun for the reader, though you may need to drag out a dictionary from time to time.
POV is delightful! You feel as if you were right in the room with each suspect and the investigator.
Loads of holiday fun!

The premise of Murder Most Festive sounded so good. I love Golden age mysteries. However, the writing in this book just wasn't great. Having a 3rd person narrator can be tricky to execute well and this author fails to do just that. Having the narrator tell the reader to look at certain things and giving exposition details the way they did took me completely out of the story. The mystery wasn't interesting and none of the characters were particularly likeable. By the end I didn't care who killed him or why they did it. I just wanted the story to be over.

Murder Most Festive sounded like the perfect Winter mystery for me. Unfortunately I couldn’t get into the writing style. This book has a writing style I would typically listen to on audiobook. Because of this I ended up Dnfing this one for now. I’m hoping an audiobook will come out soon so I can give this one another shot!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an arc in exchange for my honest review.

Murder Most Festive by Ada Moncrieff is a stately house romp with lots of characters to love or hate and a taxidermist detective to cheer for. The dialogue is engaging and keeps one wanting to finish just to find out who done it. I enjoyed this book and hope to read the rest of the authors books.

Simply boring. As a mystery it was too easy to figure out. As a “cozy” read it was too flat and dull. The characters weren’t really well done, in my opinion, as no one was particularly likable. Finally, the repetitive use of parentheses was off-putting and became downright annoying.

I am trying to read lots of Christmas books this holiday season, and of course assume a bit of corniness or cheesiness with the genre. Unfortunately this was a bit much for me in particular, and I was disappointed as I expected a fun mystery.

A fairly quick read of a whodunnit that takes place during the 1938 Christmas holidays at an English country estate. One of the guests is found dead on Christmas morning and, although it's initially assumed to be suicide, another guest who fancies himself an amateur sleuth takes it upon himself to conduct an investigation. I didn't find Murder Most Festive to be a very compelling read perhaps, in part, because as a teenager I read every Agatha Christie that I could get my hands on and most modern writers of murder mysteries pale in comparison. But mostly the author lost me because I couldn't decide whether this was a parody of so-called golden age detective fiction or whether I was supposed to take it seriously.

2.5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a digital ARC.

The Westbury family has gathered a few guests to their Sussex house for the Christmas celebrations. The house party is disturbed by the discovery of the body of one of the guests on the grounds of the house on Christmas Eve morning. The local police officer who attends the scene believes the death to be a suicide, but one of the guests suspects, and proceeds to conduct an amateur investigation.

▪ Quintessential English house party mystery. The novel is set in 1938, so like a lot of novels of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction it features the usual characters: older veterans from the First World War, idealistic young people, the inheritors of old family fortunes hiding their financial difficulties, worried servants, etc. It captures the essence of the fiction of that era, adding a bit of a tongue-in-cheek, self-referential note.

▪ Arch omniscient narrator. The narrator usually sticks close to the amateur detective, but every now and then pulls back to observe the entire household, describing some details of behaviour or movements within the house. This gives a cinematic feeling, as if the narrator was zooming in and out of the different areas of the house. I found the arch tone of the narration fun, but I can see how it could not be to everyone’s taste. It feels at times dangerously close to parodic.

▪ Characters are drawn in broad strokes. My main challenge when reading mysteries with large casts of characters, especially when, like here, a lot of them are related, is to keep track of who is who. Here, that difficulty is soon banished by the fact that the characters are drawn almost as types, or caricatures. There is the young man who drinks too much, the idealistic young socialist, the grumpy killjoy, the joker, etc. While this definitely made keeping the characters apart, some of them became tedious in Theo one-note-ness, especially the drunkard and the joker.

▪ Well-drawn mystery. The mystery itself is very satisfying. The pool of suspects is a bit shallow, which made it easier to guess the identity of the killer, but the motives were murky enough that the reveal was still surprising enough.

▪ Christmas setting. I love cosy mysteries, and they feel particularly cosy when they are set in the winter, or at Christmas. This setting also adds to the drama by forcing everyone indoors for the most part, and the seasonal weather can prevent the authorities from intervening, letting the amateur detective do their thing.

This was a satisfying mystery, with a fun setting (both in terms of historical and seasonal setting), and an odd assortment of characters. The narrative voice adds a bit of bite to the cosyness.

I love a cozy murder mystery, especially one set during the holidays and bonus if it's historical. This one didn't quite hit the mark for me. I was able to figure out the murderer fairly early on, which is always disappointing and it felt unnecessarily long with too much "filler" that did nothing for moving the story along. The setting was wonderful and the writer did a great job of describing the English countryside. I think this one has good bones (which honestly, it's been done many times before), but it just fell flat for me. I ended up skimming a lot of it because I just wasn't invested.

Murder Most Festive by Ada Moncrieff is a wonderful, historical murder mystery set in 1938 with WW2 looming. Based in a large country manor in Sussex with a houseful of suspects, it centres around Hugh Gaveston, a dogged and determined amateur sleuth who is investigating a killing. On Christmas morning David Campbell-Scott has been found lying in the fresh snow, his crimson blood staining the sparkling whiteness all around him. As the plot ticks off all the suspects, offering different motives and opportunities from a range of likelihoods, the case unveils betrayal and fraud. With occasional touches of humour, this is a compelling and engaging Christmas historical crime novel that I enjoyed immensely.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from the publisher via NetGalley. This review is my own unbiased opinion.

I don't believe I've read a recent book written in this style but I'm looking forward to reading more from Ada Moncrieff!

Moncrieff writes in the third person, which is refreshing. The viewpoint switches at times and the reader gets referred to as the viewer or observer. This reads a lot like an earlier Agatha Christie novel would, and it was fun to read in that style and setting again.

I really enjoyed following Hugh and his process. I did have the murderer pegged from the start, just not the motive and backstory. Having Hugh do the large Poirot-style reveal at the end was a wonderful nod to Christie as well.

Murder Most Festive is a charming mystery set in the English countryside in the late 1930s. I enjoyed this light-hearted Christmas cozy mystery where we are never quite sure whodunit. I enjoyed the diverse cast of characters. And I love the setting. I'd love to visit small villages in England, so reading about Little Bourton was really fun. It reminds me of a village that would be in Midsomer Murders. Fans of Agatha Christie will enjoy this light Christmas read.

Christmas 1938. It is meant to be very Christmassy especially since it is a mixed gathering, but there
seems to be many hidden tensions.

The hosts the Westbury's themselves are a mixed bunch. Lord W is vague and somewhat out of place, Lady W
is the mistress of ceremonies who has to hold things together, Three grown up children all squabbling with
each other - all seemingly having hidden agendas. Then the invitees themselves.

When David one of the guests and a very old friend of the family is found murdered on their doorstep, Hugh
Galveston is called in as an old friend and visitors for Christmas to try to use his detective skills to
solve the murder. The local constable thinks it is an open shut case of suicide and his language is hilarious
in the description.

The story of Hugh trying to detect, but avoiding the local police and the family and the other guests from
interfering and upsetting his plans are amusing. It is 1938 and on the cusp of WW but these seem far away
for this family who want to stick to their traditions of what they consider a "proper Christmas". Trying to
keep within these boundaries of what is considered respectable is also a burden as even a post mortem is
considered not quite right for the aristocracy.

Reminiscent of an era long gone, this was a cosy mystery murder set with just few characters but all vastly
different from each other.