Buy The Twelve Clues of Christmas (2012) – Rhys Bowen
Decidedly average and often dull cozy mystery in which a houseparty in the English countryside keeps getting broken up by mysterious deaths. Characters are paper-thin, writing passable but not distinctive. The book pulls one of the most frustrating tricks out of its back pocket at the climax. All through the book, the biggest mystery has been how the murderer has been making all these weird deaths happen and making them all appear to be strange accidents. At the end, after the murderers have been unmasked and died trying to escape, one character wonders aloud how they contrived all those complicated murders. Another character says that now that they’re dead, “We’ll simply never know.” The ****? Agatha Christie, P.D. James, Dorothy Sayers; none of them would pull that kind of crap. The logistics are part of the mystery, idiot; you can’t just unmask the murderer and then say, “Well, I guess he did all those murders somehow.” Strongly recommended against. 1 ½ stars.
tl;dr – totally average cozy mystery features an incredibly annoying cheat at the end. 1 ½ stars.