Readingomnivore Reviews

DEAD CRAZY is the fifth (and last, according to the author’s note) in Shannon Hill’s Lil and Boris mystery series set in Crazy, Virginia. It is available in e-book format published in 2014. It features Sheriff Littlepage “Lil” Eller and her deputy cat Boris, along with the other familiar residents of the Blue Ridge town.

Lil’s uncle Robert Eller, Sr., plans to thwart her cousin Jack Littlepage’s rejuvenation schemes for Crazy’s economy by building a huge superstore on Eller land as close as possible to the game preserve. Someone, however, steals a truck load of explosives and blows up much of the site where the store was planned. While working the crime scene, which County Prosecutor Harry Rucker has held for Lil as special investigator for the county, she and newest deputy Orrin Burke discover the remains of a young woman. Some twenty years before, while Lil had been in college, six young women had disappeared over two-year period; the body found had a script-name Tracy necklace, and the last girl who disappeared was Tracy Schreiber, daughter of now State Senator Schreiber. He backs Lil’s request for a full forensic anthropology team, and eight graves are located. Lil concludes they are the work of a serial killer with local ties. The bodies were buried on Eller land, and her uncle Robert Eller, Sr., acts out of character in dealing with the situation. What is going on, and what will it mean to Lil as sheriff?

I hate to see this series end. It’s funny, very much in Lil’s story-telling voice. “ ‘I can’t believe I still play fiddle to that damn cat,’ muttered Punk as I gathered up my registration, proof of insurance, and license. Boris growled at him. It was about two years since Punk had become a permanent fixture in my life. Boris, who predated him, was taking his time getting used to the fact. At off moments, I might catch him accepting a scratch under the chin, but generally he and Punk had an understanding. Punk understood that Boris had exclusive rights to sharing my pillow, and Boris understood Punk had opposable thumbs that meant he could not only close doors, he could also open cans of tuna.”

I particularly enjoy Lil’s Aunt Marge Turner, the godmother who raised her following the death of her parents: “Aunt Marge pulled out ‘bless their heart’ when she meant ‘may they rot in hell, the scum.’ It was like the phrase ‘Isn’t that nice.’ It meant so much, depending on tone and context.” And “I didn’t bother asking how she knew. Aunt Marge knew. That was all. People worried about the NSA or Facebook. They had to worry more about Aunt Marge and her network of genteel church ladies.” All the characters are quirky and individual, with Lil and Punk having believable baggage and scars that make for a sometimes stormy relationship.

Plotting is fair, with Lil revealing information in the case as she and her allies, including Lt. Breeden of the Virginia Highway Patrol and Special Agent Peter Howard of the FBI, uncover it. The conclusion of DEAD CRAZY is satisfying, especially as the end of the series, in giving Lil a new job and a committed relationship as she and Boris age away from the excitement of the streets.

Sense of place is outstanding. “[Speckled Hen Hill] was a minor geographical feature. It only rose maybe a few hundred feet high, which wasn’t much compared to the thousands of feet of mountain looming up around us on most sides. But Specked Hen Hill was a definite feature. Somewhere in all the fancy talk about syncline and inversion this or that, behind the Blue Ridge’s formation, you get basic old hills. Speckled Hen Hill was known for its devil’s dice, although on Speckled Hen, the black-and-white rocks weren’t all gravel-sized. They jutted out in low plow-breaking edges, which was why no one had farmed the hill. They’d timbered it clean, which meant erosion, which meant more rocks showing, which meant...well, it meant not much grew there except scrub pine, broom sedge, and if you were lucky, ragweed.”

I’ll miss Crazy, Virginia, for sure. I recommend this last visit highly. (A)

Cricket McRae’s HEAVEN PRESERVE US was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2008. It is one of her Home Crafting mystery series featuring Sophie Mae Reynolds.

Sophie Mae Reynolds is a mid-thirties widow who volunteers answering calls at Heaven House Helpline and runs Winding Road Bath Products from the home she shares with friend Meghan Bly. Philip Heaven, grandson of Nathaniel Heaven who founded the Heaven Foundation, began Heaven House with great plans, but he has alienated many people and agencies in Cadyville, Washington, with his failure to follow through. When he dies of botulism poisoning, the police and the Health Department view Philip’s death as an unfortunate accident. Sophie Mae’s lover, police detective Barr Ambrose, is also stricken with botulism, apparently picked up when he’d shared a salad with Philip the day before Philip’s death; Philip called Barr for an informal consultation about getting a restraining order. Someone had been threatening Philip. Complicating things, a violent rapist referred to in the media as the Cadyville Creeper is active, and Sophie Mae is getting strange phone calls from Allen, a stalker. Sophie Mae is determined to clear her friend Ruth Black from the suspicion that her canned beets caused Philip’s death.

To begin with, the murder method in HEAVEN PRESERVE US is the same as in A PINT OF MURDER by Charlotte MacLeod writing as Alisa Craig. In A PINT OF MURDER, Agatha Treadway dies from botulism poisoning after eating improperly processed home-canned green beans; her neighbor Janet Wadman knows that she was murdered because the green beans had been cut, not broken by hand as Mrs. Treadway prepared hers. In HEAVEN PRESERVE US, Philip Heaven dies from botulism after eating home-processed beets. Ruth Black, thought to be the source of the beets, canned only whole cylindrical heirloom beets, and those Philip ate were round beet slices. Because no one in authority will take Ruth’s denial seriously, Sophie Mae feels compelled to keep poking for information.

Characterization is nothing special. Sophie Mae pulls a major TSTL when she goes to help her chief suspect in Philip’s death to move apartments and without having told anyone in authority (including her lover Barr, who’s staying in the house with her and Meghan as he recuperates from the poisoning), her suspicions or specifically where she’s going. Her determination to get at the truth of Philip’s death seems more excuse for nosiness than genuine concern.

Sense of place is the strongest element in HEAVEN PRESERVE US, and it’s not outstnding. Formatting in the e-format is hinky, with changes in font and spacing. Recipes at the end for both preserves and bath products are hard to read. HEAVEN PRESERVE US is nothing special. (C)

Donna Andrews’s THE NIGHTINGALE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is her annual Christmas novel in the long-running Meg Langslow mystery series. Available in both print and e-book formats, it was published in 2014. Meg is the first person narrator.

Meg is serving as the on-site coordinator for the first Caerphilly Historical Society Designer Show House, a foreclosure that had been empty for six years. Caerphilly Mayor Randall Shiffley donated his construction company’s repairs to the house, with half the proceeds of the open house going to the historical society and half to the winning designer’s charity of choice. Most of the local decorators are involved, but things don’t go smoothly. Someone’s stealing packages of materials ordered for the house, and Claiborne Spottiswood has made a nuisance of himself to the other decorators in every way possible; he even has bad history with several of them. So when Meg finds him shot to death in the master bedroom he’d been designing for the house, no one is much surprised. But who wanted him dead? Why had the house been vandalized so many times, including in these final days before the opening? Can the house be finished on time?

The plots in Meg Langslow novels follow a similar format--Meg’s mother gets her involved in some project that turns out to be much more complex and dangerous than anyone ever anticipated. THE NIGHTINGALE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is no exception.” ‘Remind me again why I ever agreed to do this [show house coordinator].’ ‘To protect this,’ [Michael] said, waving a hand around in a gesture that took in not just the foyer where we were standing but the surrounding rooms. ‘It was the price we had to pay to keep your mother from insisting on having the show house here. Having all those crazy designers invading our space, redoing rooms we’ve finally got looking the way we like them, letting hordes of strangers tramp through our home--madness!’ “ (154-5) Andrews plays fair with clues and motive, and she produces satisfying conclusions.

Humor is always strong in the series. “...[Josh’s]...idea of proper shepherd attire would have taxed the expertise of a Savile Row tailor, to say nothing of my poor sewing skills. It was December, so he’d wanted sleeves. Nicer sleeves. And his tunic wasn’t white enough. Could I wash it? The hem was uneven. Thee was a loose thread. His belt was too tight. His crook was splintery, could I make it smooth? His sandals were too small. And of course, I couldn’t go to all that trouble for Josh and leave Jamie as a ragged lump of burlap. In the end, I’d managed to produce two passable tunics, with sleeves long enough to keep them warm, especially when combined with a blue-and-white striped overcoat. Their crooks were polished till they shone; their belts were made of gold-brocade cord left over when Mother had gotten new curtain ties for her dining room, and we’d delighted them with long, fussy brown beards. It was going to look as if two of the members of ZZ Top were moonlighting in the hills outside Bethlehem.” (159-60) Each book contains a comic scene that’s worth the price of the whole book. In THE NIGHTINGALE BEFORE CHRISTMAS this scene is the rehearsal for the children’s pageant at the Episcopal Church, featuring Josh and Jamie in their resplendent costumes.

Characterization is good, with an interesting mix of Meg’s kinfolks, Caerphilly town folks, and newcomers. Characters tend to be over the top, yet believable. I especially enjoy Meg’s mother: “Mother gestured as if tucking a stray lock of her beautiful if implausible blond hair back into her chignon. I hadn’t actually seen any strands out of place, so I assumed she was trying to suggest that she had been working so hard that she was in danger of becoming disheveled.” (2-3)

Andrews also gets the small-town Southern ambiance right. “By the time we finished, the snow had started falling, but we ween’t about to let a little snow ruin our plans for the evening--going to see the world famous New Life Baptist Church’s gospel choir. Every year they did a Christmas concert at the church for the unfortunate townspeople who, not being Baptist, wouldn’t get to hear them sing at their Christmas services.” (50)

THE NIGHTINGALE BEFORE CHRISTMAS is a charming start to the holiday reading season. (A-)

Lynn Marie Hulsman’s CHRISTMAS AT THORNTON HALL was a free or inexpensive e-book. Its first person narrator is private chef Juliet Hill, an American living in London with a successful career cooking special meals for those to whom only the best is good enough. She’s just discovered that Ben Flannery, the boyfriend whose family she’s finally to meet, whom she expects to propose to her over Christmas, has entertained another woman in his flat. So she accepts a last-minute job over the Christmas holidays to cook for Jasper Roth, one of America’s wealthiest tycoons, at Thornton Hall, ancestral home of his wife’s family. Exactly what he and Lady Penelope are doing at the Hall isn’t clear, since the gossip columns have their marriage on the verge of dissolution. Complicating the issue is the presence of Edward, the resident chef at Thornton Hall, who quite fancies Juliet; her feelings are complex.

I’m giving up at 17%. So far, Hulsman has an Upstairs, Downstairs thing going, which doesn’t translate very well to modern life. None of the characters, especially Juliet, is engaging. She’s supposed to be 28 years old, independent for at least half a dozen years in France and England, but her attitude toward her mother seems more like that of a young teenager. She says she’s been with only two men, Stephen whom she followed to Paris where she learned to cook, and Ben; even so, her trust in Ben is beyond naive. Ben comes across as a sanctimonious prig. Edward’s a stereotypical romance hero. All the other workers at Thornton Hall have hearts of gold. Upstairs is much more problematical.

CHRISTMAS AT THORNTON HALL just isn’t appealing to me. No grade because not finished.

Jean Hager’s THE LAST NOEL is one of her Iris House Bed and Breakfast mystery series published in 1997. Its protagonist is Tess Darcy, who owns and operates the Iris House in Victoria Springs, Missouri.

When Tess’s younger half-siblings Curt and Madison arrive early for Christmas with her, she’s concerned with keeping them occupied; Madison resents missing friends’ parties in Paris and her boy friend Danny. Tess hopes to get them involved in the annual Christmas pageant at the Community Church, where Claire Chandler, who’s been self-appointed social director and producer of holiday pageants for years, has her nose seriously out of joint. Pastor Matt has hired Sherwood Draper, head of a junior college drama department in Colorado, to handle this year’s pageant. Draper has delusions of grandeur about his acting career and his “artistic vision,” along with a roving eye caught by Lily Brookside, who’d recommended him to Pastor Matt. Draper and Lily are caught in a romantic clinch backstage and, that same afternoon, Draper is stabbed to death. His dying words to Tess sound like “Nancy” and “Howard.” Who or what is he talking about? Does Mavis Draper snap and put a stop to his affairs? Tess is determined to find out.

The plot in THE LAST NOEL contains good misdirection, focusing attention away from the motive for Draper’s murder; Hager, however, puts in a ringer as the killer, making a less than satisfying conclusion. As in many cosy mysteries, the local police is shown as less than competent--the crime scene was not fully processed for fiber evidence and fingerprints until after the killer confesses several days later.

Most of the action of THE LAST NOEL occurs inside the Community Church or at Iris House, so there’s not a great sense of Victoria Springs. There are some bits of atmospheric description: “Morning light, reflecting off the snow, brightened the dining room with its dark, heavy furniture, and the crackling fire added a cozy touch. Framed in the wide window, white-laced shrubs grew next to the fence, where snow was mounded along the wrought-iron top like sugar frosting. Beyond the fence and a wide expanse of pristine white was a snow-roofed, yellow Victorian house, surrounded by its own white-mounded shrubs. The scene could have been taken straight from a Currier and Ives print.” (35)

Characterization is average at best. Point of view shifts between most of the major characters without adding a great deal to their development. Except being asked by Mavis to help her, there’s no compelling reason for Tess to be involved in solving the mystery. Her “reveal all” confrontation that exposes the motive and the killer is unnecessarily brutal.

The best part of THE LAST NOEL is some holiday recipes from the Christmas dinner Tess offers her family at Iris House. Otherwise, nothing exceptional. (C)

Elizabeth Aston’s MR. DARCY’S CHRISTMAS is a novella originally published in 2012 and issued in e-book format in 2013.

Georgiana and Fitzwilliam Darcy travel from London to join Elizabeth Darcy and the three Darcy daughters for Christmas at Pemberley. Georgiana has accepted a proposal of marriage from Francis Moresby, a serious, morally rigid, well-informed but prosy man. Georgiana values him as “safe,” utterly unlike George Wickham, but as she observes Moresby at Pemberley, she’s disquieted by his attitude. He disapproves of the exuberance of the Darcy and Bingley children and of Elizabeth’s “low connections,” and he thinks the celebration of Christmas at Pemberley contains too many pagan elements. He hopes that Georgiana will mature into a fine woman like her aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Colonel Giles Hawkins, Darcy’s old friend from school and University days who’s been serving under Arthur Wellesley in India, arrives for the holiday, Moresby is arch about the appeal young women find in the military man and, knowing nothing about Darcy’s work in military intelligence, pontificates about the wrong-headed conduct of the war with France. Caroline Bingley, who’d meant Moresby for herself, has a new maid who’d worked in Ramsgate and knows about Wickham’s attempt to elope with Georgiana. To break the engagement, Caroline tells Moresby, who believes the worst of Georgiana; when Moresby confronts Darcy and questions not only Georgiana’s relationship with Wickham but with Hawkins even earlier, Georgiana tells him politely to get lost. Colonel Hawkins, who’s about to sell out of the army since he’s come into an unexpected title and estate, proposes. She accepts. And they all lived happily ever after.

This is an interesting sequel, occurring some five years or so after the Darcy wedding. Most of the characters are faithful to the Austen originals, and those Aston adds--Colonel Hawkins and Francis Moresby--are well-drawn. I like that Georgiana has grown enough to recognize that Moresby isn’t a suitable husband for her and that she doesn’t depend on her brother to extricate her from the engagement. I also like the improbability of Moresby ever having anything more to do with Caroline Bingley.

A pleasant short Christmas read. (B+)

SILENT NIGHT is the fifth book in Donna Ball’s Raine Stockton Dog Mystery series. It was an inexpensive e-book published in 2011. It’s set in Hansonville, county seat of Hanover County in the western mountains of North Carolina, with Raine as the first person narrator.

As Christmas approaches, much is happening in Hansonville. Someone’s stealing baby Jesus dolls from stores and Nativity scenes; there’s been a rash of burglaries; when the living Nativity scene opens, Ruth Halloway playing Mary finds a newborn baby girl swaddled in a blanket, lying in the manger; and someone finds Earl Lewis, mean drunk and small-time crook, stabbed to death in the camper on his pickup truck. Despite Dog Daze Boarding and Training Kennels being closed because the building has not been completed on time, Raine and her golden retriever Cisco are busy with Santa Dog visits to the the elementary school and to the local nursing home; Raine’s marching in the Christmas parade with her friend Sonny’s border collie Mystery, working the sheep for the living Nativity. She’s finally divorced from off-and-on again husband Sheriff Buck Lawson, and she’s in an as-yet-undefined relationship with Miles Young, multi-millionaire developer who’s helping rejuvenate the economy of Hanover County. Raine becomes involved in the criminal activities when Buck needs her for the compassionate call to notify Ashleigh Lewis of her father’s death, when they discover Ashleigh missing. Raine’s relationship with Miles changes when he’s unexpectedly handed his pre-teen daughter Melanie, who initially is not at all impressed with Raine. Can things work out so that they’ll all have a happy Christmas?

The plot is fair with appropriate clues, a believable premise, and a satisfying conclusion. Experienced readers will probably discern the killer and motive ahead of time. This series is character driven, so it’s good to read the books in order. The amount of dog-training lore exceeds that strictly necessary.

There’s little of Southern mountain speech patterns or story-telling in SILENT NIGHT, but the sense of place is good. “I live in the white-columned farmhouse that my ancestors built in 1869, which nestles at the base of Hawk Mountain on the edge of a national forest. Deer graze on my apple tree and use my driveway as a shortcut to their bed. Foxes and raccoons give the dog plenty to stay excited about, and every now and then a bear will wander down from the hills and make himself known on my front porch. Bobcats and coyotes leave pawprints in the snow on my lawn. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.” (28)

Characterization is solid for the main characters, and Ball is good at using atmosphere to reveal personality: “The morning was brisk and bright, with a white winter sun casting pale shadows through the spindly branches of naked trees. The layered mountains ranged in tone from sepia to lavender to phthalo blue, and I thought again about Christmas tree-hunting with my dad, the smell of evergreens and the bite of frost. I glanced at Melanie...and realized how sad it was for a little girl not to have those kinds of memories of her father.” (107) Cutting the number of tangential characters would better focus the story.

Still, SILENT NIGHT is a comfortable seasonable read. (B)

Jane Langton’s THE SHORTEST DAY MURDER AT THE REVELS is one of her Homer Kelly series published in 1995. It features Professors Homer and Mary Kelly who teach American literature at Harvard, but it is more thriller than mystery in format. There’s no doubt who’s committing murder and why; the question is, will his murders be brought home to him, and how.

To put herself in the Christmas spirit, Mary Kelly volunteers to take part in the annual Christmas Revels celebration held annually at Harvard. Sarah Bailey, a warm lovable Earth Mother, directs the Revels. The plot opens when Henry Shady, an outstanding singer from West Virginia who’s appearing in the Revels for the second year, is run down by Morgan Bailey, Sarah’s husband, in a terrible accident. Or is it? Mary, who heard the accident, said that the Range Rover had come up on the sidewalk and that the impact came before the brakes were applied. Homer shrugs her off. But then Tom Cobb, Sarah’s co-director, dies from eating candy laced with arsenate of lead; his successor in the Morris dancer group Jeff Peck goes over the eighth floor balcony of the Science Building; astronomer Arlo Field, playing St. George, has his throat cut but fortunately doesn’t die. How soon will Morgan shift from removing the men he thinks Sarah’s involved with to removing her?

Complicating the situation is the occupation of a campus overpass by a tent city--Harvard Towers--under the leadership of Palmer Nifto, aimed at maximum publicity to force Harvard to provide housing for the homeless. “Palmer himself was a clever escapee from alimony and child support. He had been living by his wits on the street for years. He was contemptuous of all those people who thought there was only one way to live, who wanted to pin a person down with a mortgage and payments on a car and three levels of taxes and four kinds of insurance and lifelong responsibility for a wife and a couple of bratty kids. Palmer had long since sloughed off wife and kids. It had been easy, like dumping kittens from a car window.” (84) Who’s he willing to use, and what is he willing to do, to achieve his aim?

Langton has a gift for character development. “In the solar system of the Christmas Revels, Sarah was the central sun, sending out her benevolent warmth in all directions. The others circled around her like planets around a star. Her husband, Morgan, was a satellite too, but in a different way. While the others rotated on their own axes, turning away from Sarah and then toward her again and away once more, following their own routines, Morgan was like Mercury--a small and arid planet with one face perpetually facing the sun, his dark side turned toward the rest of them, to whatever was not-Sarah.” (38)

Sense of place is outstanding. “The bare stage was unlit. The marble figures of James Otis and Josiah Quincy gleamed pale at either side, but there was no life in their changeless gestures. Otis clutched a marble document labeled STAMP ACT, Quincy handed a diploma to no one in particular. The gold-and-scarlet Harvard shields praising VERITAS at the back of the stage glowed only dimly, and the carved wooden faces of the bears and foxes above the stage were noncommittal. It hardly seemed possible that a horde of dancers and singers would soon be capering and singing all over the dusty wooden stage, while a host of fiddlers fiddled and a crowd of pipers piped and seven trumpeters tooted their glittering horns, to fill the hall with the promised profusion of Christmas merriment.” (11)

THE SHORTEST DAY MURDER AT THE REVELS is first class. (A)

Fiona Mountain’s PALE AS THE DEAD is the first book in her Genealogical Mystery series featuring Natasha Blake. It is set during and just after the Christmas season. It was published in 2002.

Natasha Blake is 28 years old, a professional genealogist who does not know her birth family; her mother had abandoned her in the hospital after giving birth, leaving only a note naming her, and Natasha had been adopted. She discovered her history only by accident at age eighteen, and it’s affected her life in all ways. She meets Bethany Marshall, a young girl who’s modeling for photographs reproducing many of the famous Pre-Raphaelite paintings. Bethany is fascinated by Lizzie Siddal, model for Millais’s Ophelia. Bethany wants Natasha to identify her ancestor who wrote a diary passed down to her by her maternal grandmother. Natasha agrees, then Bethany disappears. So Natasha is engaged on two levels--the ancestor search and its possible ties to the Pre-Raphaelites, and the search for the missing Bethany. Natasha doesn’t know which, if either, of Bethany’s would-be lovers can be trusted. Her own life is complicated by her recent break with her lover Marcus and the possibility that she jumped to false conclusions.

PALE AS THE DEAD does not involve a murder, though the circumstances under which Lizzie Siddal died and the events precipitating Bethany’s vanishing act are mysterious. Genealogical research correlates well with the investigative techniques used by a detective, so it’s not a reach to use a genealogist as a detective. The Bethany story line is brought to a satisfying conclusion; Natasha and Marcus remain unresolved. The overall theme of the plot echoes Faulkner’s famous dictum about the past not being dead; it’s not even past.

Characterization is almost too good. There’s more angst over Natasha’s adoption and her abandonment issues than necessary, to the point of detracting from the flow of the story. Natasha is believable, and Mountain accurately catches the appeal of genealogy: “It was always a thrill to find, staring up at her from the indexes, or some obscure manuscript or old book, a name, a person she’d been searching for. People easily became addicted to genealogy, and that was the reason why. That sizzle of satisfaction. And she didn’t want to stop there. She wanted to go on breathing the life back into them through documents which illuminated, even if only glimmeringly their character, their joys and sorrows ... small, personal details from the past, the ephemera of the day-to-day lives of a man or woman or child who lived a quiet unextraordinary life, parallel to your own.’ (69)

Mountain is good at revealing character through details of setting and atmosphere. “Natasha’s cottage was at the end of a short row dating from the seventeenth century. What she loved about it most was that inside, there was not a straight line anywhere. Undulating, low-beamed ceilings, thick slanted and bowed walls, tiny sloping leaded windows and crooked, creaking floors. It was called Orchard End, though there’d never been an orchard anywhere near. From the highest southwest facing windows, though, you could see right across to Littleworth Wood and the Vale of Evesham, and Natasha liked to think the person who whose the name did so because it had been possible to see the drifts of blossom from the forest of fruit trees for which the Vale was once so renowned. The house and village suited her perfectly. She preferred small places, old places, where there was a sense of continuity, and of belonging.” (16)

Sense of place and time is outstanding: “Ancient fields and time-weathered dry stone walls that molded into the landscape and looked as if they’d grown there. In the far distance, cut out against the darkening sky, the Malvern Hills and the Edge, with the road to Winchcombe running along it, rising from the valley of the Severn and the Avon. Timeless, mysterious, steeped in prehistory. The Bronze Age barrow just a few miles south west of Snowshill, where they found the 3,000-year-old bones of a warrior; the massive earthworks of the Dobunni Celts at Bagendon; the fort on the top of Burhill; the vast earthwork at Belas Knap, like the back of a great whale. Close to where they stood now, the ancient roads, the White Way and Buckle Street, had once formed a crossroads high in the hills.” (250)

I have two small complaints. One is an error of fact. Natasha identifies Katherine of Aragon as the most popular of the wives of Henry VII. Henry Tudor married his cousin Elizabeth of York to help legitimize his seizure of the throne; Katherine of Aragon was married to Henry VIII. Judicious editing of about fifty pages would better focus the story. PALE AS THE DEAD is solidly constructed. (A-)

“Death of a Pantomime Cow” is a Christmas short story by Andrea Frazer, a continuation of her mystery series featuring Detective Inspector Harry Falconer and his legman Detective Sergeant “Davey” Carmichael. It was published in inexpensive e-format.

Carsfold has a new Community Theatre, and the Carsford Women’s Guild under the autocratic leadership of Kate Kerridge is putting on a pantomime of Jack and the Beanstalk, beginning on Boxing Day. As well as a magnificent train set for his godsons, Falconer is taking the Carmichael family to the panto as a group gift. When Kate, in her custom one-person cow costume as Daisy, begins the dance that she hopes will gain her membership in the Carsford Amateur Dramatics Society and touches the lamp post, she’s electrocuted. As they investigate her death, which is quickly revealed to be murder and not an accident, the detectives find that Kate had been universally disliked, despised, or hated, and for good reason. But who wanted her dead? A chance comment about a ripped costume gives Falconer the clue he needs to uncover the killer.

First off, I enjoy this series, in large measure because of the evolving relationship between Carmichael and Falconer. The men are very different, yet as a team they complement each other. It’s also fun to see the somewhat stuffy, set-in-his- ways Falconer exposed to the normal chaos of the Carmicheal home. Characterization is well done. There’s an interesting hint that we may see Davey’s wife Kerry take a bigger role in the series.

The plot isn’t much developed, as might be expected at this length. However, Frazer does include Christmas atmosphere, including Falconer’s solitary (by choice, except for his five cats) Christmas dinner: “...Falconer had stuffed two guinea fowl with apricots and wild rice, and roasted them with mouth-sized pieces of parsnip, carrot, and potato. These, with a few mange tout and his favourite homemade bread sauce, had made a feast fit for a king, and a rather good lunch for the cats as well, who were developing quite sophisticated tastes, with his particular left-overs for titbits of an evening.”

“Death of a Pantomime Cow” is an enjoyable quick read. (B)

Agatha Christie’s “A Christmas Tragedy” is a Miss Marple short story originally published in 1932 as part of THE THIRTEEN PROBLEMS. It was issued in e-format in 2013.

The club consisting of Sir Henry Clithering, Colonel Arthur and Mrs. Bantry, Dr. Lloyd, actress Jane Helier, and Miss Jane Marple of St Mary Mead has had stories from the three men, so Sir Henry asks for one of the women to recount a mysterious occurrence. Miss Marple tells of her detection of a murder at Christmastime at Keston Spa Hydro. Miss Marple became suspicious of Jack Sanders as soon as she’d seen him with his young wife Gladys, since he reminded her of Walter Hones. Walter Hones kept the Green Man in St Mary Mead; his wife “accidentally” fell into the river and drowned, and he collected her insurance. Miss Marple sees two unfortunate “accidents” in which Mrs. Sanders could have been killed, but how to prevent her murder? She has nothing to take to the police in the way of evidence, and Gladys Sanders, on whose income the couple are living, is too devoted to her husband to take Miss Marple’s gentle warnings seriously. Following the unexpected deaths of two servants in the hotel, Mrs. Sanders is found murdered in her hotel room. Her husband has an unimpeachable alibi for all the afternoon before the discovery of her body. But Miss Marple still believes him guilty. Can she prove it? Of course, she can.

Miss Jane Marple in “A Christmas Tragedy” is the dithery little old lady who is excessively interested in people and who has a mind like a kitchen sink. “Miss Marple grew slightly pink. ‘I hope I shall be able to ell it properly,’ she said anxiously. ‘I fear I am very inclined to become rambling. One wanders from the point--altogether without knowing that one is doing so. And it is so hard to remember each fact in its proper order. You must bear with me if I tell my story badly.’ “ She loves gossip, and she’s quick to defend it. “How often is tittle tattle...true! ...it was true nine times out of ten! That’s really just what makes people so annoyed about it.” As the series continued, Miss Marple evolved into a more attractive personality with less emphasis on her recognition of archetypes.

The plot depends on establishing the time of death, which Miss Marple does using her observation of a locked cupboard and Mrs. Sanders’s hat. The whole murder depends on a somewhat unbelievable coincidence, but it’s still good fun. (B)

Jane Odiwe’s MRS. DARCY’S DIAMONDS is one in her Jane Austen Jewel Box novella series available in e-format. It was published in 2014. The story begins at Pemberley in mid-December 1812 and carries through the Christmas ball that introduces the newly-married Mrs. Darcy to Derbyshire.

Elizabeth Bennet Darcy is ecstatically happy with Fitzwilliam Darcy, and she’s overwhelmed when he presents her with the magnificent diamond ring that goes with the necklace presented to her as a wedding gift, part of the Darcy suite of diamonds worn for generations by the mistresses of Pemberley. She’s also anxious that she make a good impression on Lady Catherine de Bourgh and the remainder of their guests, who include distant cousins from France, Antoine and Louse de Valois. The Bingleys, Caroline, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, Kitty and Mary are also house guests, with Lydia and George Wickham managing to insert themselves at the last minute. The Wickhams communicate to Darcy that gossip is circulating in the regiment at Newcastle about a great scandal about to break, one involving a baby born in France, a scandal that will ruin the Darcy name. Elizabeth is preoccupied with the loss of the diamond ring the day after Darcy gave it to her, while Darcy is preoccupied with trying to find out who and what’s nvolved in the scandal. As usual, Lady Catherine is overbearing, Mrs. Bennet and Lydia behave inappropriately, and Caroline Bingley is catty. Georgiana and Antoine fall in love. Fortunately, the night of the ball, all is cleared up, and the Darcys are left to have a happy Christmas.

The Darcys, the Bingleys, and the Bennets are faithful to the Austen originals. Lady Catherine is not. Her involvement in the business of the baby born in France (not hers, though I expected it to be) simply doesn’t ring true. Even as a young woman, it’s hard to imagine her as such a good friend to someone who’d eventually have to become a paid companion. She was too aware of her own status as the daughter of an earl, so much so that she refused to marry an army officer with whom she was in love because he had no money or influence. Antoine and Louise de Valois are interesting additions.

My biggest sticking point in MRS. DARCY’S DIAMONDS has to do with the relations with France at the time it’s set. Louise invites Georgiana to visit them at their chateau in the Loire Valley between Amboise and Blois “now that it’s safe to travel in France again.” In December 1812, it would NOT have been safe for English to travel in France. The war against Napoleon was going full pace, especially in Spain; Napoleon had invaded Russia, and in December 1812 the Grande Armee was in headlong retreat from Moscow. The British naval blockade was hurting France badly, with Europe coalescing under British leadership and financing into total opposition. It’s not clear how Antoine and Louise are in England to start with--Antoine says specifically that he will soon inherit land and estate from his father, so they are not French aristocrats in exile. The Peace of Amiens, which lasted only a year, had been a decade before, and there’s no indication of when the siblings came to England. It just doesn’t make sense. When writing an historical novel, or novella, or short story, it’s important to get the history right.

The plot device of the illegitimate child and impending scandal is awkwardly set up, with the revelation of the baby’s mother anticlimactic. Editing could be better. Word choice is sometimes suspect--”wimping” is used as a verb where “whimpering” would be more appropriate in the context. “Darcy’s” is the singular possessive form of the family name, not the plural form. Point of view shifts excessively, interrupting the flow in such a short format.

Sorry, but MRS. DARCY’S DIAMONDS isn’t anything special. (C)

Shelley Frydont’s SILENT KNIFE was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2013. It’s set in Celebration Bay, in up-state New York, and features Liv Montgomery, events organizer for the tourist town. She’s only been in Celebration Bay for three months, and this is the second murder she’s been involved with.

Grace Thornsby, manager of a tacky gift shop on the square in Celebration Bay, is the town Grinch--she mistreats her employee, refuses to follow city guidelines on decorations, is rude to customers, and even hires her own Santa Claus, despite (or because?) her ex-husband Hank Ousterhout has been the official town Santa for twelve years. When her shop lights don’t come on when the official lighting occurs, Liv and her assistant Ted Driscoll discover Grace’s manager Penny Newland standing over the body of Phil, the man Grace’d hired to be her Santa. Someone stole Hank’s Santa suit and apparently wore it to commit the murder; he’s taken in for questioning. Liv’s faced with either getting Hank released or finding someone else, and a costume, to play Santa.

I’ve read 25% of SILENT KNIFE, and I give up. So far, the murder victim has not been named; motive is unknown; there’s no indication of what the police may be doing besides questioning Hank. The focus is on the impact the murder may have on the dollars if Celebration Bay’s Santa is arrested for murder. Grace Thornsby is missing but hasn’t been looked for. Frydont devotes many pages to the search for, then the construction of, a new Santa suit needed for the next day’s Breakfast with Santa. (Most seamstresses I know of measure the person before pinning the pattern and cutting the material, not cut first.)

The thing that bothers me most is the superabundance of characters. Frydont seems determined to introduce every citizen of Celebration Bay. At 25%, at least 26 characters have been introduced by name, whether or not they have any importance to the plot. Liv Montgomery so far is generic, and most of the townspeople are little developed.

The strongest thing going for SILENT KNIFE is the setting. “Every store on the square, including McCready’s Pub, was decked out in swags of pine boughs nd white lights that would be turned on simultaneously at the Celebration of Lights ceremony. Wreaths tied with bright red bows adorned the Victorian lampposts in the square. In the center of the green a row of colorful alpine chalets had been brought in to house the town Santa s well as a gift store and a food station where the line of children and their parents would be treated to homemade donuts and apple cider compliments of Waterbury Farms.” (8-9) It’s just not enough to carry the book.

No grade because not finished.

Anne Perry’s short story “The Night Watch Bell” was published in HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg and Carol-Lynn Waugh, published in 1996 in hard cover and in 1998 in paperback.

“The Night Watch Bell” has Miss Millicent Bayliss coming to London shortly before Christmas to consult Sherlock Holmes. She’s young, dithery, and emotional--all the things Holmes mistrusts about women. She fears that her father Colonel John Bayliss, owner of Allenbury Park, near Alnwick in Northumberland, and hero of the Zulu War’s Rorke’s Drift, will be murdered over Christmas by her sister Alyson Bayliss Franklyn at the behest of her wastrel husband Theodore Franklyn. Franklyn has run through his own fortune, is deeply in debt, and needs Alyson’s inheritance. Holmes and Watson engineer their arrival at Allenbury on Christmas Eve and, since it’s bitterly cold and snowing, are invited to dinner and overnight accommodation. When Colonel Bayliss goes to ring the family chapel’s bell at midnight to welcome Christmas Day, the rafter from which the bell hangs breaks, and only Holmes’s push prevents Bayliss from being crushed to death. Someone drilled holes in the beam so that the slightest tug on the bell rope would bring it crashing down. But who?

Perry does an interesting bit of misdirection, playing upon Holmes’s prejudices and Watson’s sentimentality about women to conceal the identity and motive of the killer.

For such a short story--17 pages, good sized font--sense of place and atmosphere are very good. “An excellent table was set, gleaming with crystal and fine linen, silverware, superb candelabra blazing with light, and a most beautiful arrangement of holly, bright with berries and the white splash of mistletoe. A log fire crackled in a huge inglenook hearth, warming the whole room, and the aroma of roasted haunch of venison and steaming vegetables greeted us before we had even found our places and sat down to soup.” (7)

A neat little problem. (A-)

Barbara Paul’s short story “The Sleuth of Christmas Past” was published in the HOLMES FOR THE HOLDAYS anthology edited in 1996 by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Carol-Lynn Waugh.

“The Sleuth of Christmas Past” opens on 21 December 1887, at the conclusion of Holmes’s case of the clock that ran backwards. In good humor, Holmes takes Watson to hear the carolers in Manchester Square. “The crisp December day was invigorating, and I was pleased my companion had suggested an outing. In the pas he’d displayed a tendency to stay cooped up in our rooms at Baker Street when he had no case pending; it was heartening to learn that Sherlock Holmes, of all men the most impervious to sentiment, was as susceptible as the rest of us to the joyous appeal of the holiday season.” (19) There they find Mr. Curtis, who owns the prosperous chemist’s shop near to their flat, normally an affable man but one much depressed. He’s concerned over possible theft from the Merchant Associations’ Christmas Charities fund.

On their return to Baker Street, Holmes and Watson find eighteen-year-old Amy Stoddard waiting to consult Holmes. Her father recently died, leaving her a sizable inheritance; he’d been a prosperous spice importer but with such illegible handwriting that Amy had written all his correspondence and accounts. She fears that her fiance Thomas Wickham is forging a will in order to gain possession of the business instead of marrying her. Her father’s friend John Fulham and Wickham’s partner Etienne Piaget have made her question whom she should trust. Then Mr. Cooper, Stoddard’s friend and fellow mentor to Thomas Wickham, is shot with a gun found missing from the offices of Wickham and Piaget, Wine Merchants. What’s going on, and who’s involved?

Paul captures the feel of Conan Doyle’s original stories, both in characters and in the way the elements of the plot unfold. And, of course, Holmes manages to solve the problem in time for Amy’s Christmas Eve dinner at which he and Watson are honored guests. A good read. (A-)

Gillian Linscott’s short story “A Scandal in Winter” is part of the HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS anthology edited in 1996 by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Carol-Lynn Waugh.

“A Scandal in Winter” is narrated by thirteen-year-old Jessica, a guest with her family at the Hotel Edelweiss. She and sister Amanda are often bored, so they take an interest in the other guests. One is a tall, thin man with white hair--Silver Stick aka Sherlock Holmes--and a tall square man who shambles--Square Bear aka Dr. John Watson. Though in their late fifties, both are skiers. Watson is adequate, Holmes skilled and fearless. When a tall, thin, elegantly dressed woman appears at the hotel, she behaves with dignity, but she’s cut socially by all except Holmes and Watson. She’s Mrs. McEvoy, whose husband was killed the previous season by a fall from a second-story window. She’s believed to have pushed him. But did she? Jessica had been the only person to see McEvoy’s fall, about which Holmes questions her; she’s flattered by his attention and discovers that Mr. McEvoy possessed a roving eye and that Mrs. McEvoy’s Christian name is Irene. Can Holmes redeem the reputation of “the woman?”

Details of setting reveal much about Edwardian attitudes: “The Edelweiss at Christmas and the new year was like a sparkling white desert island or a very luxurious ocean liner sailing through snow instead of sea. There we were, a hundred people or so, cut off from the rest of the world, even from the rest of Switzerland, with only each other for entertainment and company. It was one of the only possible hotels to stay at in 1910 for this new fad of winter sporting. The smaller Berghaus across the way was not one of the possible hotels, so its dozen or so visitors hardly counted. As for the villagers in their wooden chalets with the cows living downstairs, they didn’t count at all. Occasionally, on walks, Amanda and I would see them carrying in logs from neatly-stacked woodpiles or carrying out forkfuls of warm soiled straw that sent columns of white steam into the blue air. They were part of the valley like the rocks and pine trees but they didn’t ski or skate, so they had no place in our world...” (49)

Jessica is an interesting narrator, caught as she is on the cusp of adolescence, curious about people, inclined to eavesdropping, gifted with powers of observation and recall. Like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, she sees and repeats things she doesn’t understand. Linscott’s writing style is reminiscent of the original Sherlock Holmes stories. An excellent story, especially since he gets to meet “the woman” again. (A)

Gwen Moffat’s “The Adventure in the Border Country” is one of the short stories anthologized by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Carol-Lynn Waugh in HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS, first published in 1996. The acton of the story occurs during Christmas in the border area of Cumberland.

Clement Daw, a wealthy tobacco merchant, consults Sherlock Holmes about the disappearance of his neighbor Miles Aubrey. Aubrey’s married to an older woman, wealthy mother of the beautiful twelve-year-old Minnie, with whom he appears friendly and affectionate. Aubrey left his wife’s home Swithins, saying he was going to the stables to check on a sick pony, but he never returned. Search the following day revealed champagne bottles, remains of food, and a disordered bed at a nearby shooting cabin used by Aubrey, according to local talk, for liaisons with loose women, most notably Rosie Yewdale. Retracing Aubrey’s path, Holmes and Watson discover Aubrey’s broken body where he’d gone over the side of the mountain. His death is an apparent accident, but then Holmes sees Helen Aubrey and Rosie Yewdale in close, friendly conversation. What do the wife and the mistress have to discuss?

Moffat does an excellent job of re-creating the ambiance of the original stories, including the characters. Holmes is especially well done. The crux of the plot is a common one now, though it wasn’t openly dealt with in the time of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Sense of place is well developed. “I had thought Dartmoor a wilderness well suited to a savage monster [The Hound of the Baskervilles], but the Lake District was altogether more impressive. The lines of Dartmoor sweep and undulate but here the mountains loomed over us, rising above crags which themselves reared above timbered slopes so step it was a marvel that any tree could find a purchase.” (78)

“The Adventure in the Border Country” is well worth the time. (A)

I had not intended to read all of HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS, to savor a story here and there. However, I apparently was hungry for Holmes without realizing it, and I can't read just one.

Loren D. Estleman’s “The Adventure of the Three Ghosts” is a short story published in 1996 in the anthology HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Carol-Lynn Waugh. As the title suggests, the story is a riff on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

Holmes is summoned by the Earl of Chislehurst, before his elevation to the peerage Timothy Cratchit, because he’s been troubled by three ghosts. A self-made man, Chislehurst bought the estate of his father’s old employer whose generosity of later years impoverished; Chislehurst rebuilt the business until he’s one of the most respected bankers in London, though the business in South Africa has adversely affected his plans to move the business into better quarters and to provide generous Christmas bonuses to his employees. He’s dreamt of Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, as a result of which he’s made his will, leaving his wife Lady Chislehurst as his sole beneficiary, with his trusted clerk Richard as sole executor. Lady Chislehurst, a former typist for Chislehurst, is friendly with Richard. Holmes immediately suspects a murderous plot and sets a trap to catch the conspirators. What does he discover?

Again, the ambiance of Edwardian London is manifest: “...we were in a hansom rolling and sliding over the icy pavement through a gentle fall of snow. Vendors were hawking roast chestnuts, and over everything, the grim grey buildings and the holiday shoppers hurrying to and fro, bearing armloads of brightly wrapped packages, there had settled a festive atmosphere which transformed our dreary old London into a magical kingdom. In two days it would be gone, along with Christmas itself, but for the moment it lightened the heart and gilded it with hope.” (102)

An interesting sidelight is Holmes’s adjustment of a long-held belief. His theory of memory was that the brain’s capacity is finite, and when its capacity is reached, the only way for new knowledge to be retained is for a segment of old to be lost. Watson’s telling him Tim Cratchit’s background as recounted by Dickens leads Holmes to believe that there may be room in his brain, after all for literature, (B+)

Jon L. Breen’s “The Adventure of the Canine Ventriloquist” is one of the short stories in the HOLMES FOR THE HOLIDAYS collection edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Jon L. Lellenberg, and Carol-Lynn Waugh and published in 1996.

Oliver Maplethorpe appears at 221B Baker Street on Christmas Eve, interrupting the excellent dinner Mrs. Hudson had prepared for Holmes and Watson. He’s anxious to tell an amazing story, one that has Watson convinced of his lunacy. Maplethorpe had gradually made a successful career for himself as a writer and had, the previous Christmas, been preparing for his marriage to Miss Elspeth Hawley. Part of a Christmas celebration hosted by his friend Charles Vickery, who published the magazine Maplethorpe edited, and by University friend Colin Ragsdale, an estate agent, Marplethorpe is teased exceedingly about a successful article published in Strand magazine on the history and practice of ventriloquism. As a gift, they present him an oil painting of a terrier sitting on the knee of a human dummy, the dog the ventriloquist. Then in March for his birthday, Elspeth gives Maplethorpe a live dog with the exact markings of the painted dog. Marplethorpe begins hearing in the night the dog Eddie giving him commands to talk; soon thereafter Maplethorpe notices the man in the painting coming more and more to resemble himself. He’s stressed, unable to concentrate, misses deadlines, loses his job with Vickery, and is forced to move into smaller quarters. At that time he confronts Vickery, Miss Hawley (who’s postponed their wedding to go on a long sea voyage with her cousin), and Ragsdale; they fear he’s losing his mind and, when they return to the flat he’s vacating, the painting is gone. He loses contact with them but, when Vickery asks him to come to his home this Christmas, Maplethorpe appeals to Holmes and Watson to attend with him, to discover if he’s imagining things. Holmes uncovers a dastardly plot.

Breen manages neat atmospheric descriptions of a traditional English Christmas, but what I enjoyed most was his multi-layered irony about professional writers. Breen has Conan Doyle’s Watson say about Maplethorpe, all of them professional writers , “...[Maplethorpe] was not a madman but a professional writer--literary amateurs like myself are often quite ordinary and level-headed chaps, but those who attempt to scribble words on paper for a living are another matter. Even the sober ones often seem likely candidates for institutionalization.” (124)

One question about characterization. Holmes supposedly recognizes Maplethorpe from his description of the joys of the Christmas season that he repeats from an essay published some two years before in Strand magazine, which Holmes saw because one of Watson’s stories had been published in the same issue. Did Holmes read such popular, sentimental articles? (B+)

DEATH OF A COZY WRITER is one of G. M. Malliet’s series featuring DCI Arthur St. Just of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary and his legman Sgt. Fear. It is set during Christmas at Waverly Court, home of noted cozy mystery writer Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk, near Newton Coombe. It was published in 2008.

Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk is a horrible human being. He despises his children, with whom he plays a vicious game of manipulation through changing his will incessantly. His arrogance and lack of taste are appalling, as evidenced by his invitation of his former wife Chloe to his impending marriage to Violet Mildenhall. Chloe doesn’t come to Waverly Court, but his children--the favored Ruthven, eldest son, corporate shark in publishing; handsome George, gallery owner and possibly more, attended by his latest girl-friend Natasha Wellings; Albert, a minimally-successful actor of uncertain sexuality; Sarah, overweight, ungainly, best-selling cookbook author of What Jesus Ate--show up, determined if possible to prevent the marriage. Imagine their surprise when Sir Adrian announces that he and Violet are already married and that he has again revised his will. Adding to the tension are George’s announcement that he and Natasha are expecting a child, who will be Sir Adrian’s much-wanted first grandchild, and Sir Adrian’s decision to write, not his usual cozy mystery, but a roman a clef based on a murder in Scotland in the 1950s that his new wife Violet may have committed. No one should be surprised that Sir Adrian is murdered, but that Ruthven should be killed first? What is going on? DCI St. Just and Sgt. Fear must dig deep to uncover the roots of the murders.

Characterization is a major strength in DEATH OF A COZY WRITER. Sir Adrian’s fictional plotting and characterization seem a deliberate comparison, but one hopes Dame Agatha Christie’s personality was less offensive: “The light reflected...well off Sir Adrian’s Toby-mug-like features, the silk of smoking jacket, and the polished mahogany of the carefully chosen (by his hired London expert) antique furniture. Sir Adrain had shown the man a photo of the effect he wanted, torn from an article on Marlborough House in British Heritage. He contrived to look, in fact, every inch the gentleman he was not. His expression as he surveyed the room through piggy eyes said as clearly as words, Mine. All Mine.” (14) DCI St. Just is the customary inspiring leader to his legman: “The sharp physicality of the man should have had witnesses quailing, so Fear had always thought. Instead, it was comforting walking reassurance that the great British public was safe in his large, capable hands. While St. Just kept some arrows in his quiver for special occasions, overall his demeanor was genial, disarming, and entirely effective in getting witnesses to say more than they intended. Fear had never known him to fail.” (146-7). All the important characters are individual and realistic.

Sense of place is DEATH OF A COZY WRITER is outstanding. Malliet uses atmosphere to delineate character: “Despite the hyphenated name and despite the fact that the rent was far less than she could afforded, Sarah had settled into her gloomy surroundings the way an animal will burrow into the smallest available space when it wants to hide from the word in general, and people in particular. Everything in the place reflected darkly back on Sarah’s personality: The carelessly chosen second-hand furniture included two overstuffed chairs covered in faded roses that clashed with faded wallpaper that might once have been green but was now an indecipherable muddish gray. While bookshelves lining the walls might have offset the gloom with brightly covered novels, instead the dozens of worn books in the shelves blended into the mudlike rocks, their covers, mostly black or gray, announcing obscure religious tracts of long-dead martyrs and other assorted lunatics.” (4-5)

Atmosphere also conveys humor: “...the offices of Ruthven’s company...were housed in an Orwellian structure of what appeared from a distance to be an enormous ice tray propped against a pyramid, but on approach resolved into an intimidating structure of reflective silver glass cut by exposed steel beams. It was on occasions such as this St. Just felt Prince Charles’ anti-growth stance was possibly more than the dilettantish messing about of the underemployed.” (160)

The plot of DEATH OF A COZY WRITER is much like that of a Christie novel. It grows out of a crime of some fifty years before; it brings onto the stage an amazing and improbable number of the participants in that crime; evidence to solve the crime is not revealed until the great confrontation scene; and the killer is least likely suspect. In fact, the identity of the killer is reminiscent of Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I can’t say more without doing a spoiler. The action is slow to develop, but the Christmas theme turns out to be more important than it seems at first. (B+)