5 Christmas Gifts Ideas for Mystery Lovers

There’s a certain type of person who comes alive around a good mystery. Not because they want to rush to the ending, but because they love the journey of it — the noticing, the second-guessing, the slow assembling of pieces until the picture finally clicks into place.

They’re the one who pauses mid-sentence and says, “Hang on… didn’t he say earlier that—”. The one who clocks a throwaway detail and quietly files it away for later.

You know the type… You might be the type!

Mystery lovers are, on the whole, excellent people to buy for at Christmas. They enjoy puzzles. They enjoy stories. They enjoy that deeply satisfying moment when everything finally lines up and makes sense. The only challenge is that most mysteries still live quite firmly on the page or the screen — when Christmas is at its best when everyone’s doing something together.

So, if you’re looking for Christmas gifts for mystery lovers, here’s where people usually start.

1. Great Mystery Series (in Book or Audiobook Form)

A good mystery series is the gift that keeps on giving. Familiar characters, recurring rhythms, and the comforting knowledge that no matter how tangled things get, someone clever will sort it out by the end.  Plus theres always the added bonus you can get them then next book next year

Two favourites:

The Horowitz & Hawthorne seriesSharp, playful, and quietly confident in its cleverness. These books are a joy if you like being invited into the puzzle rather than led by the hand. Clues are there if you’re paying attention, misdirection if you’re not, and just enough self-awareness to make you feel like part of the game. They work beautifully in print or on audio — ideal for anyone who likes to live inside a mystery for a while.

The Thursday Murder ClubGentler, warmer, and very happy to take its time. These are mysteries you settle into rather than race through. The pleasure is in the people as much as the plot, and the tone is reassuring even when the subject matter is decidedly not. Perfect Christmas reading or listening: engaging without being demanding.

They’re wonderful gifts — but they’re still, by nature, individual experiences.

2. Classic Whodunnits for Fireside Reading

Then there are the classics. The sort of mysteries that feel permanently at home beside a cup of tea and a slightly draughty living room.

Agatha Christie remains the obvious reference point: contained settings, small circles of suspects, and revelations that make you want to flick back a few pages and say, “Ah. Of course.” These are mysteries that reward attention without punishing distraction — an important quality when someone keeps asking if anyone’s seen the chocolates.

They’re timeless, comforting, and deeply satisfying. There are some fantastic films as well as theatrical adapatations available on Audible. They just don’t involve the rest of the table.

3. Films That Made Solving the Mystery a Shared Pleasure

This is where mysteries really start to feel social.

Knives Out didn’t just revive the whodunnit — it reminded people how much fun it is to notice things together. The joy isn’t in shouting accusations at the screen; it’s in the post-film conversation. The moment someone says, “The clue that gave it away for me was—” and suddenly everyone’s replaying scenes in their head, realising what they missed.

It’s theatrical, witty, and very conscious of its own structure. A mystery that wants you to engage with it, to spot patterns, to enjoy the mechanics of how it’s built — and then to talk about it afterwards.

Which raises an interesting question.

If mysteries work so well as shared experiences on the page and the screen…why do they so rarely make it to the table?

4. Murder Mystery Dinner Parties (When You Really Go for It)

For the truly committed mystery lover, there’s always the murder mystery dinner party. The full experience. Characters, backstories, suspicious alibis, and at least one person who has clearly taken it far too seriously.

Done well, they’re brilliant. Everyone dresses up. Everyone lies outrageously. Someone spends the entire evening insisting they were definitely in the conservatory at the time of the murder, despite the conservatory being a patio and it raining sideways.

But they are, undeniably, a project.

They require planning. Organisation. A willing group. Someone has to explain the rules. Someone has to remember who’s secretly the disgraced colonel. Someone has to stop Uncle Dave from revealing the twist halfway through because “he worked it out ages ago”.

They’re fantastic for a planned evening — but Christmas Day already has enough moving parts. Turkey timings. Seating politics. That one relative who refuses to sit next to that other relative. Adding a full-blown theatrical whodunnit on top can feel… ambitious.

5. A Mystery That Fits Inside the Day You’re Already Having

Which brings us, quite neatly, back to the Christmas table.

The genius of the Christmas cracker has always been its timing. You don’t schedule it. You don’t prepare for it. It just happens. Everyone does the same thing at the same moment, and for a brief second the table is united before chaos resumes.

Our mystery game crackers are closer to a structured dinner-party mystery than a throwaway novelty — but designed specifically to work within Christmas Day, not to fully take it over. Each guest gets a character role and a small set of scripted lines to read across four acts. Nothing to memorise. Nothing to improvise. Each act gives you between one and three things to say, and that’s it.

It’s involved, but contained. The story unfolds in clear beats, you read your parts aloud, and between courses the mystery gently moves forward. There’s enough substance to feel satisfying, without demanding that the entire day revolve around it.

They’re also snap-free — kinder to pets, gentler on ears, easier to recycle — but the real point is simpler than that. They take something people already love about mysteries — the pleasure of piecing things together — and let everyone do it at the same time.

Because Christmas is already a closed-room mystery. You’ve got a fixed group of suspects, a familiar setting, and at least one unexplained incident before dessert.

All it really needs is a plot.

Check it out on Amazon (or search for it on Etsy): https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G1C26JKQ?maas=maas_adg_9B6EA6A56C85F92C77371EA4042A2262_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas