The Affair of the Christmas Card Killer

A 1920's Christmas Country House Murder Mystery

By: Jack Murray

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Snow, romance, murder - it's the most wonderful time of the year...

Christmas 1919, Lord Arthur Cavendish has received a card saying, 'Happy Christmas, I've killed you'. When Lord Cavendish is found dead, Kit Aston, a WWI hero, Secret Intelligence Service spy and amateur sleuth, investigates.

As the snow falls at Cavendish Hall, tensions rise for the isolated party guests when they realise one of them may be a killer. Past and present collide for Kit Aston as he attempts to uncover the truth in this classic murder mystery.

The first Kit Aston Mystery is fizzing with romance and hilarious one liners yet captures the underlying sadness of a nation recovering from the impact of the Great War.

What reviewers are saying about Jack Murray’s Kit Aston series:

"...well written with very appealing characters, good plots and just a nice touch of romance. Very little overt violence and no sex."

“A delightful return to the 'golden age' mysteries: gallantry displayed, love interest satisfied, red herrings all round…”

This is the first in a series of historical mysteries. From the Downtonesque Christmas opener to the hard-boiled, cozy 'Frisco Falcon' and occult-themed 'Medium Murders', no two stories are alike but all are full of humour, twists, and real historical characters.

cozy period piece

The characters were well developed and likeable. The narration was an easy listen. I enjoyed it.

Wonderful mysteries, great characters and just enough comedy and romance to make you hungry for more!

I love these books! The time period and settings are wonderful! It is so satisfying to read a book that is enjoyable and interesting and has a story that stands on its own without being full of gratuitous sex and foul language. Thank you, Jack Murray!

Thoroughly Enjoyed It!!!

This is the first book in this series and is virtual voice. That very fact probably turns many off and so they are unwilling to even give it a chance. But this book as I think one reviewer commented is well worth a human narrator. And actually the voice in this narration is really quite good. Not much differentiation between the male and female voices, but other than that it totally holds your attention and the story itself will hold up under this type of narration. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and the surprise ending at least a surprise for me was excellent. I’ll definitely be listening to more books by the author, even though they all are apparently virtual voice. Just give it a chance … concentrate on the story itself and the characters… and you can get past the narration. In fact, I’ve listened to or tried to listen to some human narrators that didn’t come close to doing this good a job.

needs better editing & a real narrator

I think the reviews so far must have been from friends of the author, or people who haven't read or listened to many books. The author either doesn't have an editor, or his editor is bad, or he doesn't listen to his editor. There are dozens of places where words are repeated - the kind of repetition that I remember my high school English teacher pointing out was bad writing. Example: "He walked into the drawing room. Everyone was in the drawing room. He went to the side table, feeling that the drawing room was too hot." This is my own fabrication, but this kind of thing happens continuously throughout the book, and it wears away at the story, making it more tedious, and longer, than it would be if the writer would clean up his work. I can't decide if he got AI to write the story, as he got a virtual author to tell it.
Unfortunately, the virtual author bogs down the listening experience even more. The inflections are all wrong and straight up inappropriate in - again - dozens of places, requiring the listener to make the correction so that the story makes sense. I like the virtual voice, but the tone and delivery aren't even close to what you'd get with a good narrator.
These issues are all the more frustrating, because there is a good story here, and interesting - but it gets lost amongst loads of unnecessary details, too-long flashbacks, and bad writing practices. I dont know how this story got published with such lazy writing, and it lowers the bar, in my opinion. Which, I suppose, is good news for lazy writers. And because it is just good enough, I'll finish this book - but I won't listen to the rest.

Narration is unbearable!

The problems with the virtual voice accentuating the wrong things made it extremely distracting to try to listen to this book. I could not enjoy it.