The Christmas Jigsaw Murders

Benedict’s many fans know that her Christmas mysteries (The Christmas Murder Game and Murder on the Christmas Express, both 2022) offer layers: they’re great cozy-adjacent mysteries (a bit more violent than many cozies) that involve word and jigsaw puzzles, and they include puzzles that the reader can solve along the way (or not; the stories are complete without the “side” activities). In this title, Benedict tells readers to look for the titles of Fleetwood Mac songs sprinkled throughout the text (in honor of bandmember Christine McVie’s 2002 death). Despite its lovable-grump protagonist, Edie O’Sullivan, being a “Christmisanthropist,” the author has also tucked anagrams of Dickens’ novels and Christmas stories into her family tale. The family is crossword setter and jigsaw enthusiast Edie’s—her current family, police-officer great-nephew, Sean, and his husband, who throughout the book are interviewing to be adoptive parents; Edie’s former partner, Sky, around whom she has great regrets; and family from the past, whose loss has paralyzed Edie’s Christmas spirit ever since. This year, she’s forced out of her Scrooge zone when six jigsaw puzzle pieces are delivered to her home with a warning that “Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.” Our heroine is on her toes as killings and more pieces ensue, as is Benedict’s clever plotting and her writing’s emotional heft. A great story for any time of year.