The Christmas Candle Murders

A 1920s Christmas Mystery (Lord Edgington Investigates..., Book 15)

By: Benedict Brown

Narrated by: George Blagden

A snowy English village with a thousand secrets, bad Christmas presents, far too many decorations and a string of inexplicable murders...

England, 1928. When a much unloved miser dies in the village of Kilston Down, no one suspects foul play–except for famed sleuth Lord Edgington, who may just be looking for a way to avoid his awful in-laws over Christmas. But after several unconnected villagers mysteriously die in their beds, the great detective and his young assistant must track down the culprit before the bells ring for Christmas Day and the killer strikes again.

Perfectly festive but with a fiendishly wicked mystery plot, this 1920s whodunit features a cast of eccentric suspects, a witty and warm detective duo and enough twists and turns to see you through to the New Year.

A spoiler-free, standalone novel in the bestselling “Lord Edgington Investigates…” series, “The Christmas Candle Murders” is an Agatha Christie-style mystery with a dash of Downton Abbey thrown in.

©2024 Benedict Brown (P)2025 Heathdene Books

A twist in the tale

From a pretty slow start comes a Christmasy questioner with a twist in the tale. Lovely.

Clever plot and nostalgic view of Christmas.

I love the narration. It brings Chrissy to life. I also always love the epilogue

A Must Listen

Lord Edgington and Chrissy are at it again, but this time it is truly a family affair. I laughed out loud several times while listening. The mystery itself is solid, but solving it with family and extended family in tow is golden. This is my favorite installment so far.

Christmas Fun

I really enjoyed this book and had many laugh out loud moments. Benedict Brown is one of my favorite authors! This story is charming and clever. I love the narrator too! I highly recommend all of this series! So much fun! Thank you for being such a good writer!
Leslie M.

Don't be fooled by the sample

This book is written and narrated in first person. The sample is written and narrated in third person. So it doesn't accurately relay the feel of the actual book.

I found this story very hard to follow - probably partially because of the fact that it is written in first person and so if you step away for a second and you come back and the narrator is using the word "I" you don't know who the f*** he's talking about, the main character or one of the others. The author does a piss poor job of providing context in most of the writing. It's amazing to me that this is like book 15 - you would think after writing so many books this person would be better at it.

There were also in general way too many characters introduced at the start of the REAL story, none of whom felt very interesting. On top of that, the voice this narrator uses for the grandfather who is the main detective doesn't fit. There's no age to it at all, no gravitas, no wisdom, no CHARACTER. He just drops into a baritone whenever he wants to represent the grandfather. It's similar to when you hear an American actor trying to do an accent that's not their natural one - say for instance a Boston accent - and so they focus on one of the total sounds that people associate with Boston and they just drill down on that. But because they're so focused on trying to sound Bostonian any inflection that would indicate emotion or characterization simply doesn't happen. Everything - every line, every thought - just has the same bland delivery. Bland but with a Bostonian accent. In this case, for the grandfather, bland but in a deep baritone. Monotonous. So he doesn't sound like a real person. The grandfather sounds like a robot or something else not quite human.

The female voices are horrendous. Horrendous!

In addition to there being way too many characters introduced in chapter 1, there's just way too many characters in this book period. It is definitely not a COZY mystery.

The murder doesn't happen until chapter 4.

I won't be finishing this book. It is going to end up staying in my library unfinished. If I hadn't returned a different book recently I totally would have returned this one, but I knew that Audible would flag my account for too many returns if I did. In truth, I rarely return a book. It has to be really bad for me to do so. This one is REALLY bad.