G B Rubin on Murder at Christmas: You Solve the Crime

The Sleuth. The ‘Tec. The Gumshoe. He, she or it comes in every shape, form, nationality or spiritual outlook on life. But they are always someone else. We, the readers, sit there, mentally flipping through alibis, suspecting everyone in sight, and muttering: ‘Come on, it’s obvious!’ at the hapless sergeant who misses the crucial clue. Reading a good whodunit has always been a participatory sport.

So, what happens when we make that impulse literal? When the reader really does get to decide which lead to follow, which suspect to interrogate, and which risk to take - even if it means ending up as the next corpse?

That question sat at the heart of my new book, Murder at Christmas – You Solve the Crime. It’s a nod to the Choose Your Own Adventure paperbacks that once lined the floor of every kid’s bedroom. I wanted to bring that same sense of playful peril - the thrill of ‘Turn to page 63 if you open the door… page 91 if you run for your life’ - to the world of country house murders and snowbound mysteries. And so, in my book, the reader gets to be the sleuth and direct the storyline – with all the stakes and peril that entails.

Because if you grew up loving those books – and I did - you’ll know the pleasure wasn’t just in surviving the story; it was in deciding the story. You weren’t a passive reader - you were the protagonist, the author’s conspirator, deciding what comes next. And that, I think, is what every crime fiction reader secretly craves: the power to make the call, to follow the clue, to solve the puzzle.

It’s easy to write off nostalgia as a yearning for childhood, but our fondness for those branching paperbacks runs deeper. Life, especially adult life, rarely gives us the luxury of neat outcomes. A good mystery, by contrast, promises that logic and observation can restore order. Add interactivity, and that promise becomes irresistible: if the world’s gone mad, at least the story still obeys rules.

In Murder at Christmas, you’re not just reading about the detective - you are the detective. You can stalk suspects down candlelit corridors, question the maid with something to hide, or take the wrong turn entirely and end up in a very compromising position. Success or failure is entirely up to you (or whoever you give the book to).

That sense of agency scratches a very particular itch for mystery readers. It turns the act of reading into investigation. Suddenly, the clues aren’t just words on a page; they’re potential lifelines. Every decision has weight.

Funnily enough, the more I wrote, the more I realised how naturally crime fiction fits the ‘choose your path’ structure. A whodunit is already a maze: red herrings, blind alleys, locked doors. All I had to do was let the reader walk those corridors themselves.

Of course, there’s a fine balance between fair play and fatal traps. The old Choose Your Own Adventure books were gleefully unfair - you could die on page four because you took a wrong turn in a cave. I wanted Murder at Christmas to keep that spirit of danger but reward reasoning. The sharp reader - the one who notes the offhand comment, the misplaced glove, the suspicious alibi - will find the right path. The inattentive one may find themselves tried for the very crime they were meant to solve.

At the start of the book, there’s a big choice: investigate the poison pen letters at Hurley Court as your pal Algy is begging you; or join your new client Melissa Thresh on a scenic Christmas train, where a magic act turns deadly. Either way you’re throwing yourself into a cast of sly, hapless or eccentric characters and a devilish mystery. Of course, they’re love letters to Christmas country house mysteries and to Murder on the Orient Express.

Setting the book at Christmas felt inevitable too. Yuletide is a time of tradition and ritual - and what’s more ritualistic than the murder mystery? The snow, the candles, the gathering of family (and grudges). The juxtaposition of goodwill and malice is delicious. Christie knew it, and so did every writer who’s ever stranded a cast of characters in a big house with too much brandy and too many secrets.

At Christmas, we crave both comfort and catharsis. A murder story delivers both. The darkness makes the light more precious. And when the reader gets to choose their path through that darkness - to follow their curiosity, their courage, or their folly - the experience becomes personal.

Murder at Christmas: You Solve the Crime by G B Rubin (Simon and Schuster) Out Now

It is 1932. You are Dr Kim Tenor, a Scotland Yard pathologist with a side line in private detection when the boys in blue are stumped. You’re celebrated in the newspapers, but you tend to get the official police’s backs up. You attend the opening night of your friend Johnny MacAlister’s ritzy new nightclub, the Golden Star. While you’re there, Johnny introduces you to his cousin, Melissa Thresh, who is being followed by a mysterious figure, and she asks if you can find out what's happening. But you have also promised Algy Hurley to go down to the family seat, Hurley Court, where some strange events have been occurring. If you help Melissa, you’re caught up in a mystery on a train that involves a seemingly impossible murder. If it’s Hurley Court, it’s a Christmas-set country house murder involving an old family ritual and a silver dagger. What would you choose?

 G. B. Rubin is the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Turnglass and Holmes and Moriarty.

More information about G B Rubin can be found on his website. He can also be found on X @GarethRubin and on Facebook.