#BlogTour ‘The 12 Days Of Murder’ by Andreina Cordani

About the book…

Eight friends created the exclusive Masquerade Murder Society while in college. The murders they solved were fictional—until their final masquerade, when one of the group disappeared. Twelve years later, the remaining members are invited to a reunion in the Scottish Highlands . . .

Twelve years ago, eight friends ran an exclusive group at The Masquerade Murder Society. The mysteries they solved may have been grisly, and brilliantly staged, but they were always fictional—until their final Christmas Masquerade, when one of the group disappeared, never to be seen again.

Now our young, privileged cast of old university friends are summoned to the depths of Scotland for a Christmas-themed masquerade party. But all are hiding something deep below the surface that could make or break their careers. Charley is a struggling actress who has always been on the periphery of this high-flying group, but has decided to reunite with her frenemies on the promise of career help if she joins the old cast for one last weekend.

When they arrive each is assigned a new identity themed around the “Twelve Days of Christmas”—they become Lady Partridge or Mr. Gold; Lord Leapworth or Doctor Swan. The game begins, and it feels just like old times. Until the next morning, when Lady Partridge is found hanging—dead—from a pear tree.

It quickly becomes clear that in this game the murder will be all too real, and the story is bringing long-hidden secrets to the surface. Will Charley’s discerning eye and outsider status allow her to uncover the truth, or will she, too, fall prey to the murderer among them?

If the group hopes to win the game and survive until Christmas morning, they will need to face the truth about their history together and who they have become—and what really happened on that fateful night twelve years before.

My thanks to Tracy at Compulsive Readers  and Zaffre Books for the blog tour invite and gifted review copy of ‘The 12 Days Of Murder’ which is out in e-book, hardcover format on November 7th ’23!

It was the night before Christmas, and all through Fenshawe House, nothing was stirring, except maybe the prickling of guilty consciences, and maybe a murderer…

A locked room mystery , entwined in a revenge thriller in an isolated stately home in Scotland, cut off from civilisation is exactly where you want to be spending the festive season, cooped up with people you are not even that keen on.

The Masquerade Murder Society has not been together since the fateful Christmas when one of their number, Karl, disappeared from within a locked room, shocking even his twin sister who had left him there, as per her meticulously planned script.

Flying recriminations over rivalries, class snobbery and privilege have left our principle narrator, and heroine, Charley, very much in the position of outsider, and it is through her eyes that we see the action unfold. However, at the back of your mind , you do-or rather, I did-consider her as potentially an unreliable narrator as she has made a living as an actress.

The other members have married each other, or been involved in similar circles so met up socially, or used their influence to boost each others careers as the daughter of a shipping tycoon, well regarded artist,a high flying journalist, billionaire business man’s son, high achieving doctor and daughter of an oligarch make up the rest of the ‘troop’.

Never having gotten over the disappearance of Karl,her boyfriend of the time, Charley feels that there is little to lose and lots of catharsis to gain-as well as taking this as an acting role-when she arrives. However, they fall quickly back into previous roles which leaves them rolling back the years to bitchiness and recrimination, mostly aimed at Charley.

But…several suitcases are missing. As is Karl’s twin , Ali, the mastermind behind the scripts which veer a little too close to home.

Add in the mysterious figure seen walking the hall, the spectre of an ancient crone with folkloric origins , and gifts which create unease rather than delight, and the stage is set for a play being directed by unseen spectators.

Will the 12 year old mystery be solved, or do others need to pay their price for youthful indiscretions and abuse of power?

When the play does not go according to script, and the first body is found echoing the traditional ’12 Days Of Christmas’ rhyme, then suddenly, the stakes and each person’s need to rely on the others to stay alive, are raised higher than a king’s ransom.

Inevitable comparisons to ‘And Then There Were None‘ aside, this is more akin to Sherlock Holmes, in this readers’ humble opinion, where the darkest side of human nature walks a fine line with supernatural motifs. What remains, is a Jamesian sense of revenge and rights being wronged, by a series of inventive and gruesome murders, overlapped with time slip that take you back to that fateful night.

As the book moves on, you become both desperately entwined in the story of then, whilst being desperately fearful for the story of now, with characters dropping like flies and sneaking suspicions blooming into full grown theories.

Split into fifth parts, this is a story which fires the gun in the fifth act which was introduced in the first,it’s a perfect Christmas murder mystery which I am sure will stand up to repeated re-readings, and reveal more of the clues each time which lead, as all good crime novels do, to whodunnit.

About the author…

When she was at school, Andreina Cordani used to get out of PE by saying she would use the time to write a book and dedicate it to her gym teacher.

In the following years, she pursued a career in journalism, working for women’s magazines including That’s Life, Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping. Specialising in ‘real life’ stories, she interviews seemingly ordinary people about their extraordinary lives – most of which you wouldn’t believe if you read it in a novel.

She lives on the Dorset coast with her family where she reads voraciously, watches influencers with increasing fascination and swims in the sea.

Links-

Twitter @ZaffreBooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n @AndreinaCordani