Juxtabook

There’s very little Martin Edwards doesn’t know about crime fiction. He has been writing since the 1990s, starting with the excellent Liverpool based Harry Devlin series. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of Golden Age detective fiction and much of what came before and after too. Like a good architectural historian he knows what makes a story attractive to the reader whilst also understanding the structure that holds the whole thing up, a skill that stands him in excellent stead in this innovative novel.

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife is a departure from his previous work: the Harry Devlin, Hannah Scarlett and Rachel Savernake series all have an extremely strong sense of place and excellent characterisation but are more conventionally structured detective stories. Miss Winter, though, shows Martin’s wide ranging skill as a puzzlemaster. We’ve had hints of this in his earlier books as he has often included ‘clue finders’ – the device for readers at the back of detective stories that indicate the clues and where to find them in the story so you can check if the writer played fair within the manner of Ronald Knox’s rules. Miss Winter takes this to a whole other level. From the very start we are shown this work is different as the dramatis personae on page vii includes ‘you’ the reader. We are immediately invited to join in a very active way.

There are stories within stories here. The premise is a murder mystery weekend in a remote part of northern England. Six seemingly disparate characters have been invited by the Midwinter Trust to spend Christmas enjoying themselves on an all-expenses paid break. So the first story is the within-narrative ‘fake’ murder of the game they’re playing – we get to work this one out alongside the players within the text. External to this, however, it will not surprise you to learn that murders happen in their real lives too.

Snowed in, we’re suddenly in a modern version of the country house mystery. It turns out that the invitees are not so disparate – they’re all connected with publishing in different ways as, of course, are we as readers (Martin has a lot of fun with this – there are a lot of book trade jokes and I laughed out loud a few times). The characters seethe with competitive resentments and then there’s the whole business of the Midwinter Trust itself – what is it and why does it exist?

Throughout the book there are puzzles galore – you can sit back and be just entertained as the story unfolds or you can fathom the translations, word puzzles and other within-text clues as you go. You will get more out the book though if you realise from the start that this is not a conventional work of crime fiction. However, Martin wisely has revealed of some of the more important ones as we go so you don’t get left too far behind if you’re not logic-puzzler of the year. The story within the story structure helps this along as the six players gather to have their ‘homework’ checked as the seasonal murder mystery game unfolds. Meanwhile the real killer continues to stalk among them.

The real plot features more than the six invited guests, of course. The publishing types are augmented by the Trust staff: lothario Jeremy Vandevell, psychologist Ethan Swift who is a man carrying guilt for some reason, several spurned lovers, plus other members of staff. We also get the hint of something in the past work of the Trust, something that has seriously gone wrong.

The two plots and different sets of characters are already a lot of plates to keep spinning but Martin adds to the this a slow reveal on some of the history of the Trust, adding a possible cold case to the situation too. The text includes invitations, flyers, extracts from a history book and more, which gradually lead you, the playing-reader, to the denouement. All of which could result in a work that feels rather bitty and without cohesiveness but in Martin Edward’s skilful hands is kept spinning in a succesful whole with a fairly played out conclusion set neatly in the centre.

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife then is the perfect book for Christmas. Full of puzzles, it is a fun, engaging read for that downtime between Christmas and New Year. Highy recommended!

Martin blogs at Do you Write Under Your Own Name? and is also on X and Instagram.