Murder Most Cryptic – The Ultimate Crossword & Cozy Mystery Combo

Throughout my very long love affair with cozy mysteries, I have read every type of scenario that has ever been put on paper.

From historical to paranormal, teashops, libraries, quint English villages, remote Alaskan towns, bank robberies down under, and locked room mysteries from Japan – and honestly, everything in between.

So imagine discovering one based on a situation I have genuinely never read before. That’s Murder Most Cryptic by Alys Cummings, and it comes with a double winning formula.

So let’s get into it…

Welcome To The Monday Night Meeting

Murder Most Cryptic is based around five people who attend an AA-style meeting every Monday. We have Susan, Eric, Nina, Omar, and Mouse.

All have alcohol abuse issues, and while four of them are currently sober, one, Nina, still refuses to believe she has an issue, though she still attends the weekly get-togethers.

Susan leads the group, and on this particular Monday night, with Nina running late, an injured man shows up at the doorstep of the church hall and is carried inside, where he promptly dies.

The police arrive, chalk it up to being an unfortunate accident, and while still quite shaken, the four group members discover a piece of paper that has fallen out of the victim’s coat.

On the paper is a crossword clue, which when deciphered, spells out ‘murder’. Yes, this is strange, but what makes it even stranger is that the very same clue appears in the following day’s newspaper.

But this is only the beginning. The victim, Laurence Wilde, as it turns out, wasn’t a particularly nice guy. In fact, he was awful, and slowly but surely it becomes apparent that more than one person in the group had previous dealings with him.

As the story unfolds, and the police start to take a second look at the case, all five group members decide to work together to figure out what happened to him.

However, secrets in the group run deep, and maybe one of them is willing to kill to keep it that way…

A Rotating Point Of View

Interestingly, the story plays out from the perspective of our five group members as well as the Detective investigating the case.

Seeing it from so many different viewpoints keeps you guessing, and you’re never quite sure who is telling the truth. The unreliable narrator plays into this a lot because the various memories we are told about tend to be quite hazy.

Despite it being a cozy mystery, there is a level of discomfort in reading the rambling internal monologue of an alcoholic’s thoughts. Nina in particular is all over the place – the kind of woman who rewards herself for not drinking by drinking.

Often we read about happy, bubbly amateur sleuths who bumble their way through a fun investigation, but here I had real empathy for the characters that Alys Cummings created. I’m not sure I actually liked them all, but I was rooting for them.

The ending was solid. Everything came together really well, and the full mystery was unraveled with a satisfying conclusion.

The Second Bonus

So not only are we getting a story from a very unique perspective, but we also get a second fun bonus in Murder Most Cryptic.

And that is a crossword clue at the beginning of every chapter with the answer revealed within said chapter.

Is it fun? Absolutely. Will it slow you down? Maybe.

It turns out that I am not good at multitasking clues and reading, so when I was keen to solve the clue, I glossed over the text and had to re-read it.

And when I was immersed in the book, I forgot the clue and had to go back and try to solve it again. Ideally, you will be able to do both, but don’t worry; not solving them is also a very valid option!

Plus, all the answers are available at the back of the book.

Recommend or Not?

Murder Most Cryptic gets a big thumbs up. It has a terrific central mystery, flawed but very real characters, plenty of secrets that get revealed, a smart outcome, and the added bonus of having so many crossword clues to solve.

I’m not really sure if Cummings plans on a second novel in the series, but given how these five characters were thrown together by circumstance, I can’t really see how it would work.

There was a hint at a budding friendship group at the end, so maybe they will work together again in the future. Who knows!