Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife

Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife- Martin Edwards

Poisoned Pen Press

Release Date: October 7, 2025

Rating: 📚📚📚📚

Synopsis: Six down-on-their-luck people with links to the world of crime writing have been invited to play a game this Christmas by the mysterious Midwinter Trust. The challenge seems simple but Solve the murder of a fictional crime writer in a remote but wonderfully atmospheric village in north Yorkshire to win a prize that will change your fortunes for good.

Six members of staff from the shadowy Trust are there to make sure everyone plays fair. The contestants have been meticulously vetted but you can never be too careful. And with the village about to be cut off by a snow storm, everyone needs to be extra vigilant. Midwinter can play tricks on people's minds.

The game is set - but playing fair isn't on everyone's Christmas list.

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If you enjoy closed circle mysteries, puzzles, and a take on the locked-room mystery, Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife is going to be right up your book aisle. In this entertaining take on the Golden Age mystery books, Martin Edwards (whose nonfiction books on the development of the mystery genre are not to be missed!) has given readers a snowbound group of six people gathering together in a tiny village over Christmas for a murder mystery weekend. Each have ties to the crime writing world and each have recently had their careers take a nosedive. Their invitation promises the game's winner will have a life-altering change in fortune. But as people begin to die, the survivors must discover: are the deaths accidents? Is one of their group willing to kill to win the game? What secrets are their hosts hiding? And can any of them survive this traditional English country house Christmas?

I'm a huge Golden Age mystery fan, locked room puzzle fan, and Clue fan- so everything about Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife jumped out as a book I wanted to try. Martin Edwards name checks plenty of Golden Age writers and tropes, and invites the reader to solve the puzzle along with the six characters in the book- which is quite entertaining. It's a mystery within the mystery, because of course, what's a snowbound group to do in a mystery book except also try to stay alive and work out who's killing them off one by one? You get the story from different perspectives, but the most entertaining one (for me) was washed-up crime writer Harry Crystal. Harry and his books (all titles are riffs on famous mystery novels you may have heard of) are washed up, his wife and daughter have left him, and the world- pretty much including Harry- have written him off as a perpetual loser. But from the beginning Harry feels like there's something else going on in Midwinter and secrets he may be the only person left out of. He's the least likely to win, but can he surprise everyone and save the day? 

If you like classic snowbound mysteries, Midsummer Murders, puzzles, and humor with your whodunits, give Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife a try! The perfect read when you're inside and the snow is falling outside. 

I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review