Mystery Readers Book Group

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret / Benjamin Stevenson

Ernest Cunningham, a fan of reading Golden Age murder mysteries, found himself with a haphazard career getting stuck in the middle of real-life ones.  He'd hoped, this Christmas, that any self-respecting murderer would kick their feet up and take it easy over the holidays.  Wrong.  Now he's backstage at the show of world famous magician Rylan Blaze, whose benefactor has just been murdered.  The suspects are all professional tricksters: masters of the art of misdirection.  The magician, the assistant, the executive, the hypnotist, the identical twin, the counsellor and the tech.  The clues are even more abstract:  A suspect  covered in blood, without a memory of how it got there.  A murder committed without setting foot inside the room where it happened.  And an advent calendar.  Because, you know, it's Christmas.