“[H]ow stressful can this game really be? A few nights in a peaceful hamlet at Christmas, trying to make sense of a puzzle? What could possibly go wrong?”. Well, an unseasonally heavy snowfall could maroon everyone, and then a murderer could start picking off the isolated denizens of the peaceful hamlet of Midwinter. But, if they can survive the slaughter, the six people who have been invited by the Midwinter Trust to take part in the competition, called Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife, are unlikely to want to leave because the prize they can win is…well it’s fabulous, isn’t it? It must be. Although, now you come to mention it, what is the prize?

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife (2025) represents something of a shift for Martin Edwards, seeing as it’s perhaps his most game-playing novel to date. Firstly, the game of the title sees six strangers invited to the boondocks to play for a prize that only one of them can win, but, rather than simply watching characters engage in competition, the reader is provided with all the materials and thus opportunity to play along as well. And this of course plays out against the backdrop of a series of murders for which, given Edwards’ much-catalogued fondness for the fair play mysteries of the genre’s Golden Age, more subtle clues are liberally sprinkled throughout the narrative (and then pointed out to you in the books Clue Finder in the closing pages).

Through journal entries written by the contestants, Edwards is also able to indulge in somewhat more selective gameplay, like warning us that we may be dealing with an Unreliable Narrator (“I’ll be totally upfront. What I write here will be selective. Highly selective. Some or all of it may be untrue.”) or, by including faded crime novelist Harry Crystal as one of those contestants, introducing more than a few sly jabs at the publishing industry. In short, it’s a book that you’ll go into without really a full idea of what to expect, and the playful nature of the various elements so cleverly stirred together with Edwards’ years of experience means there’s so much to enjoy here as the tableau unfurls in front of you.

Indeed, so expertly put together is the whole thing that you’ll be a long way through the book before the complexity of the three strands at play here hits you. Edwards does an exemplary job — other authors would do well to study it — in adding plot ingredients and elaborations over the first half so that what would sound like a complete mess if I explained it in straight prose here is instead revealed to be a very artfully constructed genre piece. This gets complicated, given the multiple people and dual timelines in play, but it runs so smoothly and builds so easily that you’ll probably not realise. Or, well, you wouldn’t if I hadn’t told you.

Plus, it’s funny at times, too, not just in those digs at publishers spending huge sums on ghost-written ‘celebrity’ novels, but in the tensions that exist behind the façade of cooperation in the competition itself.

“Mulled wine?” Daisy asked. “Sausage roll?”

Carys made a face. “I’m a vegetarian and a teetotaller.”

Just like my ex-wife, I reflected. Not to mention Adolf Hitler.

Because, see, there’s an additional aspect to all of this, hinted at above, which makes this even more intriguing as a character piece: no-one really knows what they’re doing in Midwinter, and there comes a point where you have to decide whether you want to be in the path of a homicidal loon…but if you’re not sure what size carrot you’re risking your life for, how do you decide whether the danger is worth it?

The denouement ties all these threads together neatly, and Edwards must feel very proud at being able to then walk you through the indicators that were provided throughout the text in the Cluefinder that is now becoming synonymous with his work (honestly, I imagine this is the most rewarding part for a novelist who has played the game properly). And that’s perhaps the best news about Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife: in isolating its characters and removing their mobile phones from the equation, this really does play out like a classic-era piece of murder and detection, throwing out all the best parts of this challenging genre and reminding so many of us why we fell in love with this sort of thing in the first place.

Not only was I very fortunate to receive an advance copy of this book from Head of Zeus, I was also able to sit down and talk about the writing of it with Martin for a podcast episode. So, in preparation for this coming out next week, come back on Saturday and see (well, hear) what its author has to say about its creation. And here’s hoping this isn’t that last we see of this sort of such explicit game-playing from someone who clearly understands what it means to those of us who indulge.