My enormous thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me to participate in the blog tour got The Twelve Days of Murder by Andreina Cordani. I’m delighted to share my review today.

TheTwelve Days of Murder is published by Zaffre today, 26th October 2023 and is available for purchase here.

The Twelve Days of Murder

Find the truth. Solve the murder. Never reveal your secret.

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

Now, the remaining members receive an invitation to a reunion masquerade, to be held in a beautiful and remote country house in Scotland. The game begins, and it feels just like old times.

Until the next morning, when Lady Partridge is found hanging 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. If they hope to survive the festive season then they will need to face the truth about what happened on that fateful night twelve years ago.

My Review of The Twelve Days of Murder

Several friends are spending Christmas together.

The Twelve Days of Murder seethes with menace and toxicity as the Masqueraders reunite for a Christmas Murder mystery weekend. From the very beginning when we witness Charley’s journey to the meet up, there is a sense that something nasty is going to happen and because so much is seen from Charley’s perspective, the reader is totally enmeshed in the story. 

The structure of the narrative is so clever. The freshness and ingenuity of the plot is enhanced by the traditional five act structure, and the lynchpin of the familiar Twelve Days of Christmas song, reimagined so violently and viscerally, makes the story both captivating and rather unsettling. With an almost hypnotic pendulum of timed past sections gradually adding to the understanding of the current events, Andreina Cordani provides intriguing detail. I thought the way the tenses in the writing reflected the action worked brilliantly and gave an immediacy to the present day sections. Part One sets up the insidious, untrustworthy nature of all the characters, giving tantalising glimpses into who they really are beneath the surface so that I found myself well and truly hooked into wanting to find out more. It’s such a clever trope of people playing multiple roles, not just in their murder mystery gatherings, but in real life, so that the thin veneer of civilisation is in danger of cracking at any moment. This has the effect of making the reader suspect every single character of being a murderer, and as clues are presented and the truth uncovered, Andreina Cordani takes her reader on an interesting, thrilling and dangerous ride. 

The setting is equally traditional and equally innovatively used. The characters are trapped by the weather, lack of phone signal and blocked roads, but they are also trapped by their own secrets and lies so that the tension is ramped up throughout. I loathed almost of all of them, trusted none of them and was entirely mesmerised trying to decide who was likely to be the next victim and who the perpetrator might be. There’s an uncomfortable pleasure in trying to work out those elements that almost makes the reader feel as culpably unpleasant as the people. I thought this was such skilled writing.

The themes woven into The Twelve Days of Murder are so pertinent to today’s world of cronyism, class division, bullying and corruption that the book has an edginess that enhances its impact. I think that whilst it’s a captivating story, it’s one that lingers after it is finished in a rather disquieting fashion, making the reader think.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Twelve Days of Murder. It’s brilliantly plotted, fast paced and entertaining and absolutely perfect for setting down to read on a cold winter’s afternoon, although it might make you look twice at any guests staying over Christmas! 

About Andreina Cordani

Before writing her first novel, Andreina Cordani was a senior editor and writer for women’s magazines including Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan. Her assignments included interviewing gun-toting moms on the school run, ordering illegal DIY Botox online and learning to do the splits in eight weeks.

She lives on the Dorset coast with her family where she reads voraciously, occasionally makes TikTok videos and swims in the sea. She is the author of two dark thrillers for young adults, The Girl Who… and Dead Lucky. The Twelve Days of Murder is her first novel for adults

For further information, visit her website, follow Andreina on Twitter/X @AndreinaCordani and find her on Instagram.

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