Happy New Year! It’s Monday the first and that means we are BACK to more typical TCO fare. And what better way to ring in the New Year than with a closed-circle murder mystery that takes place on New Year’s Eve? Tom Hindle’s The Murder Game promises all of the above, with a fun twist: the whole thing takes place at a NYE murder mystery party.

Having recently read another murder mystery party tale (and hosted several such parties of my own), I was hoping that this would let me explore that plot setup a bit further. In theory, this structure could add many layers of intrigue to a mystery, by forcing characters out of their comfort zones. Unfortunately, this plan was scuppered when I realized that Hindle writes around the premise, and very little party occurs.

So instead, let’s talk beginnings and conclusions – which feels apt for starting the New Year. Hindle has set himself a tough task, introducing and wrapping up the story for fifteen-odd characters. He’s more successful at the former than the latter, despite theoretically similar writing challenges. So what gives?

The start of something new

Introductions are critical to ensemble murder mysteries. They take on multiple roles for the reader, layering pure exposition while driving engagement, empathy, and intrigue. When you’ve got a cast this extensive, it can be easy for all the characters to blend into plot-mush. A great introduction makes it easier to remember the different players and maybe even guess at their upcoming roles.

Hindle tackles this by focusing on four characters, giving us a brief perspective chapter for each. We meet Martin Edwards, a reluctant attendee of the murder mystery, who vehemently opposes the conversion of the local lighthouse. There’s Justin Fletcher, an (extremely young!) local journalist, just trying to write the story that will take him national. Then there’s Nigel, recently a social pariah, dragged along by his wife to try and regain status. And we also meet Gwen Holloway, clearly a local favorite, who seems worried about Nigel’s attendance.

These simple character sketches take up about 17 pages and immediately set up mystery and intrigue. There’s clearly some story with the lighthouse. Everyone seems mad at Nigel – will he be murdered? If not, why not? At this point in the story, it’s easy to slip into the different characters’ perspectives, while remaining aware of what information remains hidden. There’s enough information to drive empathy, and enough missing to drive intrigue. A reasonable hook…

Structural shifts

But that’s just the introduction, and that structure shifts quickly once we get into the meat of The Murder Game. For the majority of the book, the narration follows the “young characters” – Justin, Will (who discovered a local dead body twelve years prior), Theo (their schoolmate), and Lily (the Outsider). Presumably, this is because they know the least about the local history.

Unfortunately, their combined lack of knowledge and youth mean that we spend less time with that lovely cast from earlier. Instead, we’re listening to the thoughts and frustrations of nineteen-year-olds who try to learn about the past and end up stonewalled at every turn. Justin, it turns out, is pretty unpleasant. Will has a ton of personal trauma that he won’t describe directly, making his chapters a bit frustrating. Theo is sequestered in a different area of the party and doesn’t know much about the past, making him an ineffective source of clues. And Lily is, unfortunately, persona non grata, meaning her chapters are mostly an exercise in frustration.

Hindle has done an excellent job of writing these teenagers as true to life. Unfortunately, that makes them relatively reactive to the events around them, happening across information in spite of themselves. None of these characters seem to particularly care about solving the murder, which makes it more difficult for the reader to do so.

One can’t help but wonder what would be different if we instead followed the adults from earlier as they process each new piece of information and try reconcile it with what they know. A mystery following perspective characters with guilt and pent-up anger and fear would have been extremely emotionally engaging. But instead, we get the four unwitting detectives, who seem to trip into crime-solving.

Who should you follow?

You can probably already guess the issues with the conclusion. It is, ultimately, our younger protagonists who put all the pies together. And so the conclusion mostly follows them, one year later, with only passing mentions of the adults.

It’s an interesting choice, because the heart of the story is the with older generation. They experienced the pain and trauma of the original murders, decades back. And they’re the ones who relived that pain over the course of the events in the novel. If any characters deserve catharsis, it’s these ones. So the fact that their stories end in a sentence or less is… frustrating.

Frustrating, too, that instead we focus on this younger generation. I won’t spoil anything, but I found the ending a little too pat. These characters spent most of the book frustrated or distracted or otherwise not solving the mystery; this is not necessarily a situation where they’ve earned a truly happy ending.

I don’t mean to sound so harsh here. The Murder Game is a fun mystery read. The puzzle itself is both fair-play and fine, if not the most challenging. If you, like me, prefer to spend New Year’s Even away from people, this will be a fine accompaniment to your evening.

It’s just that – the book starts off with great promise, and ends up merely a fun read. And a lot of that, for me, comes down to the choice of perspective characters, the depth of writing. Contrast this to, for example, The Twelve Days of Murder, which has a similar premise (remote murder mystery part gone horribly wrong). Twelve Days succeeds by exploring each suspect deeply – and that makes the conclusion all the more memorable.

We will keep the closed-circle mysteries coming this year (though I’m still expecting to diversify a bit), and hopefully they will stick the landing a bit better. Until next time – stay cozy, and stay curious!

This will count for my “story with a grieving character” for the 52 Book Club Challenge!