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Readingomnivore Reviews

Dell Shannon’s NO HOLIDAY FOR CRIME was originally published n 1973. It is one of her Lt. Luis Mendoza mysteries set in Los Angeles. It opens Christmas Eve.

The Mendoza mysteries are all police procedurals, and they feature the same basic list of characters: Lt. Luis Mendoza, domesticated former womanizer and card sharp who inherited a fortune from his miser grandfather: Sgt. Art Hackett, always on a diet because his wife Angel is a gourmet cook; Sgt. George Higgins, so happy in his marriage to colleague Bert Dwyer’s widow and enthusiastic over their new baby; Detective Jason Grace, who’s finally been able to adopt Celia Ann, orphaned in a previous case; and all the other members of the newly-created Robbery-Homicide Bureau of the LAPD. Enough is given of their family lives to create the sense of a community of real people whose lives continue between the installments Shannon chooses to report. The books work well as singles, but reading them in sequence adds depth to the stories.

Like real life police work, the detectives work a variety of cases, from a series of burglaries that wouldn’t be very profitable (the burglar signed a pawn shop ticket with the name O.N.A. FixedIncome), to the murder of Lila Askell (who’s just passing through LA on her way home to Salt Lake City for Christmas), to two robberies with murder (husband shot, wife kidnapped, one raped), to a series of liquor truck highjackings, to a couple ripping off johns. Emphasis is on old-fashioned police work, locating and questioning suspects with a minimum of scientific assistance. Most cases they solve, but there are always some that remain open.

This is one of my all-time favorite series, one of the first that I deliberately made an effort to read all, in order. It’s a bit dated now because the the advances in forensics, but NO HOLIDAY FOR CRIME is still a worthy read. (A-)
 
Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Markheim” is a short story in the MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS collection edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982. It is very reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Stevenson’s own later Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Its only connection with Christmas is that the events happen on Christmas Day.

Markheim goes to the shop of an unnamed dealer with whom he’s done business before, selling objects from his uncle’s collections; this Christmas Day, however, he says he’s looking for a gift for a rich lady whom he hopes to marry. When opportunity presents, Markheim stabs the dealer to death, then experiences mistaken images and sensations brought on by fear as he searches for money in the shop and house. (C)
 
Dorothy L. Sayers’s “The Necklace of Pearls” is one of the short stories in the anthology MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, published in 1982 and edited by Thomas Godfrey. It features Lord Peter Wimsey and occurs during a Christmas county house party.

Sir Septimus Shale fills his house with an assortment of family, their significant others, Lord Peter Wimsey, and his and Lady Shale’s personal secretaries. Part of Christmas includes the presentation to daughter Margharita with another pearl for the fabulously expensive necklace begun when she was a baby. On Christmas Day, while the group is playing ‘Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral,’ Sir Septimus realizes Margharita’s necklace is gone. Search of the two rooms in which the group had been does not find it; neither does the search of the persons of those present. Sir Septimus asks Lord Peter to investigate and, through finding a pin, locates first the pearls and then the thief.

Much of the pleasure of this story is the contrast between the modern-thinking Lady Shale and the very different Sir Septimus. Sayers uses atmosphere to emphasize his character: “...[Sir Septimus] did insist on an old-fashioned Christmas. He was a simple-hearted man, who really liked plum-pudding and cracker mottoes, and he could not get it out of his head that other people, ‘at bottom,’ enjoyed these things also. At Christmas, therefore, he firmly retired to his country house in Essex, called in the servants to hang holly and mistletoe upon the cubist electric fittings; loaded the steel sideboard with delicacies from Fortnum & Mason; hung up stockings at the heads of polished walnut bedsteads; and even, on this occasion only, had the electric radiators removed from the modernist grates and installed wood fires and a Yule log. He then gathered his family and friends about him, filled them with as much Dickensian good fare as he could persuade them to swallow; and, after their Christmas dinner, sat them down to play ‘Charades’ and ‘Clumps’ and ‘Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral’ in the drawing room, concluding these diversions by ‘Hide-and-Seek’ in the dark all over the house.” (325)

“The Necklace of Pearls” is plot-driven with little characterization, but it’s an interesting variation on the idea of “The Purloined Letter.” (B)
 
“Blind Man’s Hood” is Carter Dickson’s short story in the collection edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982 as MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS.

Rodney and Muriel Hunter travel to Kent to celebrate Christmas with their friend Jack Bannister and his family. Later than expected, the Hunters find the house empty except for a woman in brown who greets them, asks them in, and tell them the story of an impossible murder that occurred in the old house in the 1870s.

As to be expected in Carter Dickson’s work, characterization is not developed. How the crime occurred is most important. There is, however, some atmospheric description: “To find such a place in the loneliest part of the Weald of Kent--a seventeenth-century country house whose floors had grown humped and its beams scrubbed by the years--was what they expected. Even to find electricity was not surprising. But Rodney Hunter thought he had seldom seen so many lights in one house.... ‘Clearlawns’ lived up to its name. It stood in the midst of a slope of flat grass, now wiry white with frost, and thee was no tree or shrub within twenty yards of it. Those lights contrasted with a certain inhospitable and damp air about the house, as though the owner were compelled to keep them burning.” (357) (B)
 
Cyril Hare’s AN ENGLISH MURDER was originally published in 1951. It is set at Warbeck Hall in Markshire, during a small family house party over Christmas.

Lord Thomas Warbeck is dying. He’d been diagnosed with an aneurysm some three months before, and he doesn’t expect to live long into the new year. He’s anxious to see his son Robert Warbeck married to a family connection, Lady Camilla Prendergast, and out of his presidency of the neo-Fascist League of Liberty and Justice. Lord Thomas’s next heir is his younger brother Sir Julius Warbeck, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lady Camilla is in the house party, as is Mrs. Carstairs, ambitious wife of Sir Julius’s assistant and expected successor in office. Working in the muniments room is European scholar Dr. Wenceslaus Bottwick, researching the development of the English constitution between 1750 and 1784 as revealed in the correspondence of the third Viscount Warbeck. Lord Warbeck asks him to remain as a guest through the holiday season. Also present is Briggs, butler for forty years to the Warbecks, his daughter Susan, who has secrets, and Rogers, Sir Julius’s Scotland Yard bodyguard. Tensions swirl amidst the small group: neo-Nazi vs socialist political beliefs, social class tensions, personal relationships, ambitions. Robert Warbeck on Christmas Eve following dinner says he has an announcement, then drops dead of cyanide in his champagne. Rogers is persuaded to take over the investigation of his death, but a blizzard has blocked the roads and taken down the telephone lines. The group is isolated for the time being. The next morning, someone tells Lord Warbeck of his son’s death; as a result, he has an attack that kills him. Who? Dr. Bottwink works out the motive for the deaths, but he’s not successful in preventing a third death.

The title AN ENGLISH MURDER is very appropriate because the motive is pertinent only in Great Britain. Once the motive becomes apparent, there’s only one possible murderer. The conclusion seems rushed after a leisurely-seeming buildup.

Point of view shifts between the members of the house party, which adds to the well-drawn characters. “Beyond the glass partition, [Sir Julius] coul see the rigid backs of the two silent men sitting in front. Their stiffness and impersonality, even towards each other, affronted him. Why should officialdom always tend to turn men into automatons? Sir Julius liked to think of himself as a genial, friendly type of man, conscious--as was only proper--of his own position and what was due to it, but within proper limits human and approachable. But try as he would, he had never succeeded in getting on proper terms with these two. There must be something wrong with them.” (20)

Atmosphere is also well developed. “Absolute stillness surrounded the rambling old house. Not a breath of wind rose to stir the dense fog which had settled over the snow-bound countryside. Not a sound penetrated through the freezing air. Peering from the high window of Lord Warbeck’s bedroom, Camille Prendergast looked out into a world in which life lf seemed at a standstill--a world featureless, colourless and, to all appearances, boundless. It was difficult to believe that beyond that black expanse the business of living still went on; that in crowded sea-lanes about the coast, ships crept cautiously through the murk, or swung at anchor, calling dismally to one another with their raucous sirens; that all over England, defying frost and snow, men and women were gathered together to keep Christmas in a spirit of love and happiness.” (144)

AN ENGLISH MURDER is a good Christmas-time read. (A-)
 
Edward D. Hoch’s “Christmas is for Cops” is one of the short stories in MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS, edited and published in 1982 by Thomas Godfrey. It features murder of a cop at the Christmas party sponsored by the Detective Bureau Benevolent Association.

Former head of Homicide, Captain Leopold has been promoted to lead the new consolidated Violent Crime Division. One of his first duties is to deal with Sgt. Tommy Gibson, who’s been investigated by the DA’s office and found to be taking weekly payoffs from Carl Freese, the gangster who runs the numbers rackets. Freese is noted for the force he uses to intimidate and punish informers. Gibson confesses, but he tells Leopold he wasn’t in it alone; he’d taped the initial meeting between Freese, the other detective, and himself. Leopold gives him until the next day to produce the recording. Gibson goes the next day to help put up the Christmas tree for the Christmas party and, having hidden the recording on or near the tree, is stabbed to death in the men’s rest rooms. There’s no sign of a tape recording. Leopold deduces the location of the recording and also identifies the killer.

“Christmas is for Cops” focuses on the plot with little characterization or development of setting. The state of modern technology may obscure the location of the recording. (C)
 
“The Case is Altered” is Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion short story included in the anthology of Christmas stories in MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982.

Campion is one of a large house party en route to Underhill, in Norfolk, home of Sir Philip Cookham and his wife, when he observes strange interactions between guests Peter Groome, Patricia Bullard, Lance Feering, and Victor Preen. Campion keeps his eyes open and frustrates a blackmail scheme.

There’s not much atmosphere despite the Christmas setting, and characterization is minimal. “...[Mr. Campion] had work to do on his own account and had long mastered the difficult art of self-effacement. Experience had taught him that half the secret of this maneuver was to keep discreetly on the move and he strolled from one party to another, always ready to look as if he belonged to any one of them should his hostess’s eye ever come to rest upon him inquiringly.” (383) The final touch in his returning the item over which the blackmail occurred is neat. (B)
 
“The Christmas Party” is Rex Stout’s contribution to the MURDER FOR CHRISTMAS collection of short stories edited by Thomas Godfrey and published in 1982. It is, of course, narrated by Archie Goodwin and is memorable because of what it reveals of his and Nero Wolfe’s relationship.

When Archie refuses to drive Wolfe to an appointment on Long Island because he’s committed to a Christmas party, and Wolfe insists, Archie begins a prank with far-reaching consequences. He shows Wolfe a marriage license for Margot Dickey and himself; they are to announce their engagement at the office party held by Kurt Boutwiell, the interior decorator for whom Margot works.The party consists of Boutweill; his financial backer Mrs. Perry Porter Jerome, whose money gives her ownership rights; her son Leo, who objects to his mother spending his inheritance on Boutweill; Cherry Quon, receptionist and Kurt’s potential wife; Arthur Kiernan, business manager who has his own ambitions for Cherry; Emil Hatch, the construction wizard who hates them all; Margot, who says the marriage license caused Kurt to promise immediate marriage; Archie; and Santa Claus, the bartender. When Kurt toasts the Christmas season in his private Pernod, he drops dead of cyanide poisoning, and Santa disappears. The police focus on Santa, but Cherry Quon insists that Wolfe prove Margot Dickey guilty. Is she? Or did one of the others spike the Pernod with cyanide from the work room? And who is Santa Claus?

The story is well-constructed; the motive makes sense, the resolution involves one of Wolfe’s trademark exposure charades, complete with Inspector Cramer and Sgt. Purley Stebbins. But best of all is Archie’s realization: “...[Wolfe] had shown what he really thought of me. He had shown that rather than lose me he would do something that he wouldn’t have done for any fee anybody could name. He would rather have gone without beer for a week than admit it....” (409)

“The Christmas Party” is one of my all-time favorite holiday stories. (A) :welcome
 
Michael Malone’s short story “Christmas Spirit” is one of the seventeen short stories commissioned for The Mysterious Bookshop by Otto Penzler as Christmas gifts for customers. He edited and published those from 1993 through 2009 in CHRISTMAS AT THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP in 2010. The authors include some of the best current mystery writers. Malone’s story is my favorite.

Cuddy Mangam, chief of police in Hillston, North Carolina, is in New York just before Christmas to see Reba McIntire sing in a Broadway musical. Outside The Mysterious Bookshop where he’s gone to buy a Christmas gift for his head of Homicide Justin Savile, he runs into Lauri Wald, a NYPD detective he’d met the previous spring, and she invites him to Otto Penzler’s Christmas party. At the party, Claudia Wells, vindictive ex-wife of best-selling author Bart Wells, goes out the bathroom window to her death. Cuddy, with the help of Penzler’s cat Spirit, quickly solves the murder.

As well as atmosphere, Malone excels at characterization: “[Penzler] took this tone, like he was hard as Pharoah’s heart, but the fact is, I think he was a marshmallow. It was like with him and the fat yellow cat, which he pretended to despise, claiming he had no use for animals or children or anything else that didn’t appreciate a first edition or a premiere cru. But the whole time Penzler was telling us how the cat had just sneaked into his life a year ago Christmas, climbed up the fire escape and came in through the bathroom window, he kept dropping bits of pate on the floor for that tubby thing to gobble. The cat spat out the olive he had been licking the salt off, and tore into this foie gras. His name was Spirit. I thought it was for alcohol but turns out it was Dickens.” (138)

“Christmas Spirit” (A) :welcome ; CHRISTMAS AT THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP (B)
 
Brian Kavanagh’s A CANTERBURY CRIME was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2010, one of the Belinda Lawrence series. It is set during Christmas and New Year’s in Canterbury, England.

Hazel Whitby and her young business partner Belinda Lawrence are in Canterbury to value the contents of the Manor House; Professor Walter de Gray, who’d diced some six months previously, had willed the house to the National Trust, but he the contents to his long-time secretary Miss Muriel Mowbray. The professor had been finishing a book on St Thomas Becket, promising an astonishing revelation in its final chapter, but the chapter is missing and no one knows its contents. Hazel and Belinda become suspicious of the professor’s death when they hear that his head was bloody, though his death certificate says he died of a heart attack. His doctor arranged for the cremation of his body the next day after his death; there were no funeral, no autopsy, and no report to the police. Then Miss Mowbray is attacked in London, injured in much the same way as Becket, with a major cut to the head that eventually kills her. Hazel and Belinda eventually find the USB drive with the final chapter of the professor’s book and discover what he had thought a relic of Saint Thomas Becket. But what is the Umm Walad Peter Jones keeps mentioning? Who killed Professor de Gray, and why?

The plot in A CANTERBURY CRIME is suitably convoluted and gives accurate information about the death and subsequent examinations of the body of Saint Thomas Becket. The elements of the plot have been used before, but I can’t go into detail about them without doing a spoiler. Much depends on coincidence and happenstance; Kavanagh sets up a confrontation scene, cuts away at the climax of it, then comes in several hours later for one of the characters to tell what happened. Shifts in point of view make the action choppy. The conclusion seems rushed. Characterization is nothing special, even for Hazel and Belinda, the protagonists and continuing characters in the series. It lacks a thorough edit for correct use of apostrophes in possessive and in plural nouns.

Easily the strongest element in A CANTERBURY CRIME is the sense of place Kavanagh evokes: “Passing through the trees they came to a dejected overgrown garden with a circular driveway, a dry fountain in the centre and a house beyond. Belinda’s first glimpse of the two storey imposing tiled and timbered bulk, hidden way forlorn and unwelcoming, took her breath away. The jettied Manor House, the upper storey overhanging the floor below, stood as it had for over four hundred yars in the midst of the copse shielded from the prying eyes and the passing years. The Tudor building, with a porch concealing the front door as though to evaluate any interloper seeking admittance, gave the impression that it was prepared to concede defeat and sink into the ground, its wooden structure weary of the centuries past and now seeking respite.” This isn’t, however, enough to redeem the story. (C+)
 
Michael Malone’s TIME’S WITNESS is the second in his Cuddy and Justin mystery series featuring Chief Cudbeth Mangum and Lieutenant Justin Savile V of the Hillston, North Carolina, Police Department. It was originally published in hardcover in 1989 and reissued in e-book format in 2002.

George Hall, a black man convicted of first degree murder in the shooting death of an off-duty Hillston police officer who was trying to hassle him into resisting arrest, is on death row and due to be executed. Protests against the death penalty led by his brother Cooper Hall, a young activist, seem to have availed nothing, but suddenly Governor Wollston grants a month’s reprieve. Counsel for the Defense Isaac Rosethorn uses the time to investigate grounds for a new trial. As he and the Hillston Police Department go deeper into the circumstances of Bobby Pym’s killing, it’s apparent that George Hall’s claim of self-defense is justified. But then Cooper Hall is murdered. Widespread corruption within the Hillston Police Department seven years before, ties between business and political leaders with these criminal elements, and the power structure’s determination to remain in control, all make George Hall’s receiving justice problematical.

It’s hard to write a review of TIME’S WITNESS because it’s much more than a mystery novel. It is a revelation and meditation on Southern politics, race relations, social class, and the criminal justice system. Its themes are particularly applicable in the aftermath of Ferguson. Malone plays fair in presenting information as Cuddy uncovers it. The action spans from just before Christmas and George Hall’s upcoming execution through most of the next year, winning the motion for a new trial, investigating and solving the murder, the new trial, and a brief epilogue that pulls together what happens to the important characters.

Point of view is that of Cuddy Mangum, limited third person beautifully used. Cuddy is working-class in origin--his father was a millworker in a textile factory--who served two years in Vietnam, went to college, and was chosen Chief of Police through the influence of Briggs Cadmean, who owned the factory and much of Haver County. He’s working on a doctorate in history. Cuddy’s perspective is clearly stated: “Like peers and party leader of all times, all places, the nobles of Hillston were thick as thieves, and always had been. And like peers and party leaders of all times, all places, they were such hogs at the board of plenty that the poor folks waiting below for the trickle-down of the lords’ crumbs stayed mighty skinny. But revolution’s not my business. I’m not paid to stop corruption on a cultural scale. I’m paid by the system to stop the petty thieves from fouling the machinery. I work at the bottom, keeping the lower levels of the ship of state clean. It’s when the nobles visit the hull to order things done that they don’t feel like doing themselves, that’s when they step into my territory, and that’s when I make them my business.” (178)

Malone creates a whole range of characters, from members of the Hillston Police Department, to the local movers and shakers (including the Savile family), to state-level politicians, to various members of the black community in all its levels. One of the most interesting is Isaac Rosethorn, the only Jew native to Hillston, mentor to the young Cuddy, who wins a new trial for George Hall and defends him in it. “Over the decade, Isaac Rosethorn had been preserved not just by some alchemic mix of tobacco, alcohol, and ancient fat, but by an avoidance of all major human emotions, except a cupidinous curiosity. Whenever I thought I’d detected in those deep round eyes some mild stirring of anger or envy or hurt, it always slid behind the cloud of abstracted serenity now floating over his face. He took law cases because the ‘interested’ him, variously outraging acquaintances both on the left and the right, who had decided he was one of them.” (43) He’s distinctly reminiscent of Atticus Finch.

Sense of place is second to none. Hillston, North Carolina, comes across in Malone’s writing as a real place. “Downtown Hillston had made it through another day and turned off its Christmas trees and its store lights and its six blocks of neon sleighs flying without any reindeer across Main Street with Santa holding tight to his toys. Somebody was still awake at the Hillston Star (probably Bubba Percy), a half-dozen lonesome people still sat waiting in the coffee shop at the bus station, the Tucson Lounge was filling its dumpster with the night’s rubbish, but the rest of Hillston had gone to bed when I drove up to the wide stone steps of the municipal building, flanked by two Confederate cannon that Cadmean had arranged to have hauled over from the old county courthouse. As far as I know, they’d never been fired. Sherman bypassed Hillston to the west, missing the surrender party waiting for him on the banks of the Shocco. According to a plaque, some of his stragglers did stable their horses overnight in a farmhouse near Pine Hills Lake; it’s now the fanciest restaurant in town and a favorite with the inner circle.” (56)

There are only three books in the series, but I recommend it highly. TIME’S WITNESS is definitely first class writing. (solid A):welcome
 
Gayle Trent's DEAD PAN was a free or inexpensive e-book published in 2009, one of her Daphne Martin Cake Decorating series. It is set in Brea Ridge, Virginia, and occurs in the weeks before Christmas.

When everyone at the Brea Ridge Pharmaceutical Company's Christmas party becomes ill with gastroenteritis, Daphne is anxious to get the results of the analysis of the food--she'd supplied the cakes for the party. One guest, Fred Duncan, son of Connie Duncan in the accounting department at the company, is in hospital in a coma. The Duncans have had more than a year of serious bad luck. Fred had been an outstanding athlete who, running an errand for Steve Franklin , his boss at the Save-A-Buck grocery store, had been involved in an auto accident that left him brain-damaged. But why does everyone else who became ill and was treated with Brea Ridge Pharmaceutical's new drug survive, and Fred die? Analysis showed none of the food contained the bacteria. Was his death associated with his brain injury? Since Daphne had earlier solved the murder of Yodel Watkins, Connie Duncan asks Daphne to find out why Fred died. As she pokes around, she uncovers people who make a profession of test subjects for drug trials, money problems at the company, professional jealousy of one journalist for another, and a connection between Fred's earlier accident and his death.

DEAD PLAN has a reasonable plot, with adequate foreshadowing and a satisfactory conclusion. Daphne doesn't pull major TSTLs. Characterization is adequate but nothing special. Daphne is believable, especially in her ability to equivocate: "I didn't share Cara's ambitious nature. I'm not really a spotlight kind of gal. I'd prefer to live my life quietly and peacefully. I had enough excitement while I was married to the human volcano. But I'd be polite and take the number. I said maybe I would look into it after the holidays. I didn't commit to anything, and I hadn't even specified which holidays." (34-5) Other characters are sketchier, and there are more than needed to carry the plot. There are some interesting-looking recipes.

My biggest problem with DEAD PAN is the lack of sense of place. The setting is southwest Virginia, near the tri-cities, but there's little physical description of the area. Despite being born in Brea Ridge, living in Tennessee, and returning to Brea Ridge, Daphne as first person narrator does not reflect Southern story-telling or speech patterns. (C+)
 
Michael Allen’s SPENCE AND THE HOLIDAY MURDERS was originally published in 1977. It is an old-fashioned police procedural set three days during Christmas week, featuring Detective Superintendent Ben Spence, acting head of CID at the Southshire Police Headquarters in Wellbridge.

Roger Parnell has a last evening on the town on December 21, then goes home to be bludgeoned to death. In charge of the case, DS Spence moves methodically but swiftly to find out as much as possible as quickly as possible about Parnell, so as to finish the case before Christmas. Parnell had been a womanizer, using his home’s position next to the playing fields of Petal Parkis Girls’ School to indulge his passion for covert and willing photography of the girls and for seducing them; he’d engaged in questionable business practices in his insurance brokerage business, selling second mortgages to unsuspecting debtors who subsequently lost their homes, and in a shady plumbing business; he appeared to be blackmailing his business partner, MP Marcus White, as well as engaging in a long-term sexual relationship with Mrs. White from whom he received payment. Who didn’t want him dead?

The plot is simple and obvious. A reference on the first page is a dead giveaway to the motive for Parnell’s death, and the killer is the only person who’d directly confronted him about his behavior.

Character is not much developed, even for DS Spence. Oddly enough, Detective Inspector _____ Laurel and Detective Sergeant Percy Wilberforce are more fully described than he. Spence seems a clone of the George Gently-Charles Wycliffe model CID officer.

Sense of place is the strongest element in SPENCE AND THE HOLIDAY MURDERS. “Downsea was a posh little town, no question about it, Spence reminded himself. He glanced at the exclusive golf club on the left, and then back at the sea looking green in the distance ahead of him. Nearly all the property in Downsea was expensive and looked it; much of it was owned by retired people. The town formed a wealthy annexe to Shireport, a healthily vulgar seaside resort about two miles down the coast; Shireport was where many of the Downsea residents had made their money. There was a certain amount of light industry in Downsea, glove-making and boat-building for instance; and there were some fine hotels for the top end of the tourist trade. But mostly the people who lived there were the kind who read the Financial Times every day, and worried about what it said.” (11-12)


SPENCE AND THE HOLIDAY MURDERS is misleading as a title, because there’s only one murder in present time; the other death is a suicide. It’s a pleasant enough read, but in no way memorable. (C)
 
“Chainsaw Nativity” is S. W. Hubbard’s Christmas story in DEAD DRIFT: THREE SHORT MYSTERY STORIES published in e-format in 2013. It’s set in Trout Run, New York, in the High Peaks Region of the Adirondack Mountains. Its protagonist is Chief of Police Frank Bennett.

Bucky Rheinholz spent three years carving a life-sized nativity scene that everyone agrees is a masterpiece. Once it’s set up in front of the church, it becomes a tourist attraction causing traffic jams in one-stoplight Trout Run. Then someone steals the statue of Joseph. The church has been having food stolen from the kitchen, but this is obviously different. Add in a group of men who leave without paying for damages to a hunting cabin, and a proud gunsmith who’s oddly negligent in getting guns repaired and returned, and Frank figures out why Joseph was needed.

Not much characterization or sense of place, but an interesting twist in the plot. I think I will check out the novels in the series. (B)
 
Rex Stout’s “Santa Claus Beat” is one of the short stories in MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS, edited by Cynthia Manson and published in 1990.

Art Hibble is a newly-promoted detective in the New York Police Department who dreams of discovering a body and finding a killer, thus achieving his ambition of transfer to the Homicide Division. Instead, he’s sent to Duross Specialties, a mail-order gimcrack jewelry business. Emil Duross claims that his employee Helen Lauro stole an expensive ring he’d purchased for his wife for Christmas; he’d shown it to her that morning but, while Miss Lauro is gone to deliver packages to the Post Office, he discovers the ring missing. To file a claim, he calls H. E. Koenig, adjuster for Apex Insurance Company, who insists on calling the police. Hibble takes only a short time to discover the truth, but he still thinks Christmas Eve is a good time for a murder.

Though not a Nero Wolfe story, the narrative voice still sounds much like Archie Goodwin. The plot is a neat piece of deduction, and Hibble brings it to a satisfying conclusion. (B+)
 
“Whatever Became of Ebenezer Scrooge?” is Tom Tolnay’s short story in the MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS anthology edited by Cynthia Manson and published in 1990.

After experiencing a joyous Christmas Day, as Ebenezer Scrooge is walking to his home, he passes the business premises of his despised competitor Gladnought Pennerpinch. He sees that Pennerpinch is totaling up his accounts and, fearing that he will fall behind, goes into Scrooge & Marley to work on his own totals. He’s avoiding Jonathan Wurdlewart, whose debt comes due at midnight, lest he be paid off on time and lose the house and bakery shop pledged for the loan. Bob Cratchit finds Scrooge’s body the next morning. What happened to Scrooge?

If one demands tidings of comfort and joy in a Christmas story, “Whatever Became of Ebenezer Scrooge?” will be a disappointment. Not only does Scrooge’s repentance prove ephemeral, but two good men conceal from the police what they suspect about Scrooge’s death. Even more contrary to the spirit of the season is the revelation that human nature doesn’t change much from generation to generation. I can’t say more without doing a spoiler.

Tolnay includes great atmospherics: “...when the cheer had simmered down, and the fire had withdrawn its flames, and a slab of clouds had blocked out the stars, and a cold mist was pressing against the windows, Ebenezer Scrooge, with a wave of his hand, alighted from the glowing doorway of his nephew’s home and headed into the gloom of nineteenth century London. It was that sort of penetrating gloom which oftimes follows hard on the heels of a frolicsome occasion, the way the brightest and most pleasant of rooms becomes dank and dreary when plunged into the bitter darkness of a winter’s night. It was the gloom of death itself.” (212)

Different, and very well done. (A) :welcome
 
“Who Killed Father Christmas?” is Patricia Moyes’s short story in the collection edited by Cynthia Manson and published in 1990, MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS.It’s set in the toy department of Barnum and Thrums store in London.

Mr. Barrowdale, the first person narrator, is working in the toy department for the third year, earning money over the holidays while awaiting the beginning of the next university term in January. Miss MacArthur unpacks a consignment of teddy bears from Hong Kong, and several are quickly snapped up by employees. Charlie Burrows comes in as a substitute Father Christmas because the regular man Bert Denman has been taken ill. Special arrangements have been made that Father Christmas will present one of the bears, distinguished by a blue ribbon instead of red around its neck, to little four-year-old Annabel Whiteworth. But when the first child of the morning enters Father Christmas’s enclosure, Father Christmas is dead, stabbed in the back, and the teddy bear is missing. Superintendent Armitage reveals that the dead man had been an undercover narcotics detective and that the teddy bear had been filled with heroin. The murder and theft must be an inside job, but who?

“Who Killed Father Christmas?” is light on characterization and atmosphere, but Moyes skillfully focuses attention away from the killer to produce an effective surprise ending. (B+)
 
Herbert Resnicow’s short story in the MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS anthology edited by Cynthia Manson and published in 1990 is “The Christmas Bear.” It’s set in Pitman, Pennsylvania, a small town with many unemployed people.

Mrs. Slowinski, the first person narrator, wants to buy a special bear that her great-granddaughter Deborah has fallen in love with. The bear has been donated to a special auction planned to raise the money for the Rozovski family to take their four-year-old daughter Petrina, who is in desperate need of a liver transplant, to New York to get publicity and donations to fund a new liver. Mrs. Slowinski initially tells Debbie they can’t afford the bear, which is unique; it is a Chinese moon bear, made for Mr. Wong as a young child by his grandmother. But the bear disappears from the top of the rickety shelving, out of the reach of the tallest person in town, Fire Chief Homer Curtis. Who took it, and how? Suffice it to say that Mrs. Slowinski solves the mystery and receives the greatest Christmas present she’s ever had.

A real “feel good” Christmas story. (B+)
 
Thomas Adcock’s short story “Christmas Cop” is one in the MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS anthology edited by Cynthia Manson and published in 1990. It’s set in New York City on Christmas Eve.

Neil Hockaday is the first person narrator, a cop for twelve years who’s worked the last three years in the Street Crimes Unit--Manhattan (aka SCUM patrol). Divorced, with no children, Hock doesn’t think much of Christmas, bringing as it does a surge in street crime as various criminals take advantage of the crowds of tourists and shoppers. This Christmas Eve, Hock helps a homeless woman Frances and her three children get to the Martinique Hotel, where the city provides temporary shelter. Later, after his shift is over and he’s engaged in some negotiations, he joins an unlikely group of Santas who bring Christmas to the children at the Martinique.

Adcock includes good character development for Hock: “...I appreciate being able to work pretty much unsupervised, which tells you I’m at least a half honest cop in a city I figure to be about three-quarters crooked. Sometimes I do a little bellyaching about the department--and who doesn’t complain along about halfway through the second cold one after shift?--but mainly I enjoy the work I do. What I like about it most is how I’m always up against the elements of chance and surprise, one way or another.” (27)

For the short story format, sense of place is outstanding, both in physical details of the city and in atmospherics: “...the snow had become wet and heavy and most of midtown Manhattan was lost in a quiet white haze. I heard the occaional swish of a car going through a pothole puddle. Plumes of steam hissed here and there, like geyers from the subterranean. Everybody seemed to have vanished and the lights of the city had gone off, save for the gauzy red-and-green beacon at the top of the Empire State Building. It ws rounding toward nine o’clock and it was Christmas Eve and New York seemed settled down for a long winter’s nap.” (37-8)

Well done, touching story. (A) :welcome
 
“Dead on Christmas Street” is John D. MacDonald’s short story in the MYSTERY FOR CHRISTMAS anthology edited by Cynthia Manson and published in 1990.

Loreen Garrity, witness in the upcoming trial of three young punks who’d tried to rob the Sheridan City Loan Company, falls from the window of her employer’s seventeenth-floor office. Signs of a struggle on and about the window show that she did not go willingly. Dan Fowler, the Assistant District Attorney who’s been assigned to prosecute the case, and the police assume that Vincent Servius, local mobster, is behind both the botched robbery and Loreen Garrity’s death, since one of the robbers she identified is his younger brother, Johnny Servius. Was she killed to prevent her testimony, or does someone else have reason to want Loreen Garrity dead?

MacDonald manages to create believable characters, even in short story format. Of Vince Servius he says: “He had not been directly concerned with violence in many years. In that time he had eliminated most of the traces of the hoodlum. The over-al impression he gave was that of the up-and-coming clubman. Golf lessons, voice lessons, plastic surgery, and a good tailor--these had all helped; but nothing had been able to destroy a certain aura of alertness, ruthlessness. He was a man you would never joke with. He had made his own laws, and he carried the awareness of his own ultimate authority around with him, as unmistakable as a loaded gun.” (55)

There is a deft plot twist that sets up the solution of the murder. (A-)
 
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