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Readingomnivore Reviews

A VERY DARCY CHRISTMAS is Victoria Kincaid’s 2016 holiday variation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It is available in free or inexpensive e-book format. It’s one of the best I’ve read, with both humor and a different spin on the action.

Married only a few months, with Georgiana spending the holiday at Rosings with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth Bennet Darcy look forward to a secluded Christmas at Pemberley. But best-laid plans often fail. First, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet arrive uninvited and unannounced, Mrs. Bennet in hysterics fleeing from the imminent invasion of Meryton by the French Army. After all, the militia has transferred to Brighton, and Mrs. Long heard a Frenchman talking in the village! Then Georgiana returns home, unable to stand Lady Catherine’s denunciations of the Darcys’ marriage or the TWO suitors Lady Catherine has personally chosen for her. Lady Catherine sends Colonel Richard Fizwilliam to see that Georgiana arrived safely home. Not trusting the Colonel’s judgment, she descends in person, bringing not only an entourage of servants but the two suitors as well. The final straw is the appearance of George and Lydia Bennet Wickham, who’d been visiting his friends in Lambton and learned of the arrival of the Bennets at Pemberley. The Darcys will be stuck with them at least through Twelfth Night. What ensues is a farce based on Lady Catherine’s bad manners and the Bennet women’s antics (Lydia manages to set Pemberley on fire twice!), combined with serious elements: Georgiana’s soul-searching about marriage, Elizabeth’s worries over Darcy’s reaction to her relatives and to her failure so far to conceive, Wickham’s attempt to blackmail Darcy, and Colonel Fitzwilliam’s dealing with love and a mysterious Frenchman.

Kincaid is sufficiently faithful in her development in the canonical characters. She makes Colonel Fitzwilliam two years younger than Darcy, his guardianship of Georgiana more titular than active, and his feelings about her unmistakeable. Darcy and Elizabeth have spells of hurt feelings and angst that frank talk would have solved, but both behave well in trying circumstances. When Elizabeth decides the guests must go, she handles them masterfully.

Of the new characters, Mr. Worthy is the most notable. One of Lady Catherine’s candidates for Georgiana’s hand, he is an enthusiast over new advances in agriculture, about which he monologues constantly. He could bore for England, making Mr. Collins (who mercifully stays in Kent) look a brilliant conversationalist. Worthy does make the mistake of speaking of wheat and corn as if they are two separate grain species, the American usage. A Regency Englishman called wheat “corn,”while he referred to American corn as “maize.” Mr. Worthy is worth the price of the book.

A VERY DARCY CHRISTMAS is good fun. (A)
 
FROST AT CHRISTMAS is one of the early books in R. D. Wingfield’s police procedural series featuring Detective Inspector Jack Frost of the Denton CID. It was originally published in 1984, reissued in paperback format in 1995, and served as the basis for a long-running BBC drama.

Clive Barnard, newly promoted to the CID and nephew to the Chief Constable, reports to Denton ten days before Christmas, where he’s assigned (temporarily, he hopes) to DI Jack Frost. Superintendent Mullet despises Frost and wants to be rid of him, but when his other DI goes out sick, he has no choice but to put Frost in charge of the search for missing eight-year-old Tracey Uphill, last seen leaving Sunday School. It’s bitter cold with snow on the ground and more falling, so finding Tracey is urgent. Searching is slow and unsuccessful until a psychic, whose inclusion is mandated by the CC, directs them to Dead Man’s Hollow in the Old Wood. There the searchers find the skeleton of a bank clerk who’d disappeared in 1951 with £20,000 in cash chained to his wrist. While Frost deals with the search for Tracey, her murder, the 1951 bank robbery and murder, and Mullet’s efforts to engineer his transfer, Frost and Barnard manage to solve several lesser cases.

The plot in FROST AT CHRISTMAS is realistic in the sense that police almost never have the luxury of dealing with one case but must handle several of varying degrees of urgency the same time; constraints of funding and manpower, especially during the holidays, limit how effectively the police may respond. On the other hand, the plot in FROST AT CHRISTMAS depends too much on unlikely coincidences. Wingfield does not foreshadow the identity of Tracey’s killer or the motive for her murder. The conclusion is weakened by the prologue.

Point of view is mainly limited third person through Frost’s perceptions, with occasional shifts to Mullet and Barnard. None are particularly admirable. Mullet’s ambition for promotion makes him a stickler for rank, respect, and efficiency, ready to use his personal influence to suppress negative media coverage. Barnard is perhaps too young to have developed much savvy, fast-tracked because he’s the CC’s nephew, but determined to prove himself. Frost is not an attractive character. He’s slovenly in dress, speech, and manners; he’s inefficient in paperwork, making up crime statistics and failing to report his men’s overtime hours to payroll. Frost comes and goes as he pleases; he’s disrespectful to Mullet to his face; he searches the vicarage without a warrant, breaks into a suspect’s home, and fails to protect a witness. He depends on intuition and hunches to solve his cases. Too many characters are tangential to the main story lines, most not developed beyond rank and last names.

Beyond the problems caused by the weather in searching for Tracey Uphill, Wingfield makes little use of the setting, While I enjoyed the FROST series on BBC, I won’t be following up on the novels. (C)
 
A PEMBERLEY CHRISTMAS is Jennifer Lang’s 2015 variant on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It is the eleventh novella in her Darcy and Elizabeth What If? series.

Fitzwilliam Darcy is in despair at the beginning of the Christmas season. Not only has he not seen Elizabeth Bennet since their brief meeting at Pemberley during the summer, but he’s estranged from his best friend Charles Bingley. He’s also facing a precarious financial future. A fire seriously damaged the east wing of Pemberley, a storm destroyed the home farm, and in October his bankers advised that his investments had failed. He cannot afford to repair Pemberley and fears having to sell land or even the entire estate. As rumors of his financial woes circulate, his Society friends and neighbors have distanced themselves. Concerned about her brother’s state of mind, Georgiana Darcy writes to cousins Anne de Bourgh and Colonel Fitzwilliam, telling them of what’s happened and asking them to come to Pemberley for Christmas. She especially asks Anne to include Elizabeth Bennet, who’s visiting her friend Charlotte Lucas Collins at Hunsford. A few days togetherness at Pemberley and encouragment from Georgiana and Anne give Darcy and Elizabeth the opportunity to resolve their mutual misunderstandings and become engaged. Darcy honors his true friends; differences are reconciled, and good fortune returns to Pemberley.

Characters are generally faithful to Austen’s originals, especially Lydia Bennet Wickham, who writes begging letters to Georgiana, and Mr. Collins, who is as fatuous as ever. In the spirit of the season, Lang redeems George Wickham.

A PEMBERLEY CHRISTMAS is a gentle feel-good holiday read. (B+)
 
HARBOUR STREET is the sixth book in Ann Cleeves’s Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope series. It’s set in and around the coastal village of Mardle, opening ten days before Christmas. It was published in both e-book and book formats in 2015.

Vera Stanhope’s Sergeant Joe Ashworth and his daughter are in the Metro car where someone stabs elderly Margaret Kruckowski to death. Despite crowds of Christmas and rush hour commuters, no one witnesses the attack. Margaret had been a good woman who’d lived in the same house on Harbour Street for most of her adult life. She helped Kate DeWar, formerly folk singer Kate Guthrie, run Harbour House as a bed and breakfast, more like a family member than a tenant. She attended and supported St Bartholomew’s Anglican Church, volunteered at The Haven, a refuge for women with no other place to go, and mentored both Kate’s children and Haven ex-resident Dee Robson. Who wanted her dead? The Investigation of Margaret’s death leads to Dee Robson’s murder and reaches years into the past to uncover motives and the killer.

Once more Cleeves has managed a surprise ending for a plot in which the killer’s identity is well foreshadowed. She is adept at keeping attention focused away from the guilty party.

Characterization is a strong point in Cleeves’s books. Vera Stanhope and the detectives she leads are individuals, all very different, all very aware of each other’s strengths and weaknesses but making up a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. Each makes valuable contributions to the process. Much of the action comes from Vera’s viewpoint, and she’s honest about both the crimes and herself: “ ‘What do we know about the victim?’ This was Vera’s favourite moment in an investigation. She was nosy, loved digging around in another person’s private life. Perhaps, she was forced to admit, because she had no personal life of her own.” (17) Cleeves keeps Vera fresh by including more details of her relationship with her father Hector.

Cleeves excels at putting the reader in the scene with her description of setting and atmosphere. “The light had almost gone, but the sky had cleared. As the cloud thinned the temperature had dropped and there were strange white pools in the bowls formed by the sand at the top of the dunes. Places where hailstones had pooled and frozen. There was a big white moon… Vera found a vantage point in the dunes. She could see the car park behind her and the beach in front. Further south there were the lights of Mardle town centre and the harbour wall. Out in the bay a boat was moored and on the horizon was a huge container ship making its way toward the Tyne. No sound. Not even of surf on the beach, because there was no wind and the tide slid in like oil. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve and it seemed that everything was breathless, waiting.” (349-50)

HARBOUR STREET is another top-notch read. (A)
 
DARCY’S CHRISTMAS WISH is Penelope Swan’s 2015 e-format Christmas variation on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

*****SPOILERS*****

When Fitzwilliam Darcy was twelve years old, he was saved from death in a frozen pond at Rosings by a young girl with beautiful brown eyes. His family is convinced that she is a figment of his traumatized imagination, but he doesn’t forget her. Fifteen years later, he again passes the Advent season with his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh. Coincidentally, Elizabeth Bennet is on a visit to Charlotte Lucas Collins at Hunsford, where she becomes embroiled in Lady Catherine’s harsh treatment of the housemaid Gertie. Accused by Lord Hargreaves of stealing a watch fob and a ring, Lady Catherine pronounces her a thief, sacks her without a character reference, and forbids anyone in the village from offering her assistance in any form. Darcy’s refusal to question Lord Hargreaves’s claim leads to a temporary estrangement but, after he sees Hargreaves attempt to force himself on another maid, Darcy soon makes things right with Elizabeth. When Colonel Fitzwilliam’s young son George becomes lost in a major snowstorm, Elizabeth’s rescue causes Darcy to recognize the little girl who’d saved him all the years before.

I’m of divided mind about DARCY’S CHRISTMAS WISH. On one hand, the plot variant is unique in my reading of Austen fan fiction. Characters are reasonably faithful to the Austen originals, with significant positive development of the character of Anne de Bourgh. Hargreaves, Gertie, and George, the new characters, are believable. Use of setting and atmospheric description is stronger than in Austen.

However, there are problems on purely common sense grounds. In Darcy’s rescue, when Elizabeth returns to the pond with Mr. Gardiner, Darcy is gone. Is it likely that Mr. Gardiner would simply leave Hunsford without checking at Rosings to be sure the boy had been recovered? Charlotte tells Elizabeth that Lady Catherine is the magistrate for the parish. Magistrates were responsible for investigating crimes and holding courts to determine guilt and punishment. Women, who could not control their own money, bring a lawsuit, or testify in court, could not be magistrates in legal fact. Lady Catherine’s control of the Hunsford villagers, including the Collinses, is based on her social and economic power. Lady Catherine’s changed attitude comes about so quickly that it seems unlikely to be long lasting. Elizabeth pulls two TSTLs in DARCY’S CHRISTMAS WISH, one when she insists on accompanying the search for George in a major snow storm, and the other when she separates herself from the rest of the searchers to investigate what turns out to be George, nearly buried in the snow. Unable to get the child back to Rosings, she must also be rescued.

There are two usage errors that bother me. One is a pet peeve. Swan describes Darcy as “disorientated.” The noun form of the verb “disorient” is “disorientation.” The participle form used as an adjective is “disoriented.” The second questionable word choice involves Elizabeth and Darcy working in “coercion” to provide shelter for Gertie. “Concert” or “cooperation” or “collaboration” seems more appropriate.

DARCY’S CHRISTMAS WISH is an imaginative variant if common sense is laid aside for the duration of the read. (B)
 
“The Twelve Clues of Christmas” is the fourth short story in P. D. James’s Christmas 2016 anthology THE MISTLETOE MURDER AND OTHER STORIES. It is available in e-book and print formats.

Newly promoted to Sergeant, Adam Dalgliesh of the Metropolitan Police is en route to his aunt’s home Christmas Eve afternoon when a man runs into the road, demanding to be taken to a telephone. His uncle Cuthbert Harkerville is a suicide at nearby Harkerville Hall near the village of Wivenhaven. When he returns Helmut Harkerville to the Hall, Dalgliesh decides to protect and check the crime scene while awaiting the arrival of the local police. He finds several discrepancies between the scene and the story told by siblings Hubert, Gertrude, and Carl Harkerville and Mrs. Dogworth, temporary cook hired over the holiday. By the time Inspector Peck brings him into the case later that day, Dalglesh has solved the crime.

“The Twelve Clues of Christmas” contains an explicit allusion to the plotting of Agatha Christie, while Dalgliesh’s explication of the crime to Peck distinctly recalls Sherlock Holmes’s deductions based on his observations. It’s well furnished with clues as indicated by the title, most capable of supporting either suicide or murder, and spiced up with the outre suicide (suicide is a tradition in the Harkerville family, all of whom are barking mad according to Constable Taplow) of Cuthbert Harkerville’s grandfather on Guy Fawkes Night.

Even in the brief format, James includes atmospheric bits that establish a firm setting. “The Twelve Clues of Christmas” satisfies if the reader is content to suspend disbelief and just enjoy. (A-)
 
“Epiphany with Tea” is Renata McMann and Summer Hanford’s short story sequel to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s set at Pemberley during Christmas 1822 with flashbacks to Rosings in April 1813 when Darcy proposed to Elizabeth Bennet, who accepted him. It is a free or inexpensive Kindle download.

Happily married for nine years with children Fitzwilliam, eight, and Jane, three years old, the Darcys are at outs over what will be done with George Wickham’s son. Wickham had died in a duel over another man’s wife three years after his marriage to Lydia Bennet; Elizabeth is in mourning for Lydia’s recent death that leaves eight-year-old George an orphan with no paternal relatives. Darcy agrees with Elizabeth that Mrs. Bennet, herself now widowed, and Mary are unsuited to bring up a boy. Kitty Bennet is married to a low-ranking officer without money or connections, and she’s in failing health. Jane Bingley already has six children (TWO sets of twins!) and is pregnant again, while Bingley’s failed investments have them financially stressed. The Gardiners have five children of their own with fewer resources than the Darcys, and Aunt and Uncle Phillips are no more qualified to rear George than Mrs. Bennet. Elizabeth sees no alternative to having him at Pemberley, but Darcy recalls his childhood and subsequent troubles with the boy’s father and refuses to have him in the house. It is only as he remembers his winning of Elizabeth that he comes to terms with his responsibility toward a boy who has his grandfather Bennet’s eyes.

Action in “Epiphany with Tea” is about equally divided between 1822 and the 1813 flashbacks. Besides Darcy and Elizabeth clearing their mutual misunderstandings, Lady Catherine reveals enough of her marriage to Sir Lewis de Bourgh to clarify her insistence that Darcy marry Anne. It’s a neat little meditation on family and acceptance. (A-)
 
WINTER WONDER is the fifth novella in Elizabeth Ann West’s Serendipity series of sequels to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Published in 2015, it is available in free or inexpensive e-book format. It presupposes knowledge of events in the earlier novellas.

WINTER WONDER opens in October 1812, six months after Elizabeth Bennet married Fitzwilliam Darcy. when he brings her and her extended family home to Pemberley. Elizabeth is pregnant; Mrs. Bennet is widowed; Jane is living in Scotland caring for the deceased Lydia Bennet’s illegitimate child (about which Kitty does not know); Wickham was executed for desertion; Darcy has disrupted Georgiana and Kitty’s plan to publish Kitty’s first novel; Mary’s understanding with Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam has come to naught; Mrs. Gardiner and her children are guests indefinitely. To add to the drama, Alastair Darcy, Darcy’s scandalous uncle who’d been shipped off to India some twenty-five years before, returns to Pemberley broke and a thief, determined to restore his fortunes at his nephew’s expense. The Fitzwilliam family, thanks to the Earl’s bad investment decisions and his heir’s profligate lifestyle, is in desperate financial straits, counting on Darcy’s purse and position to return them to Society. Too many secrets to stay confined, even in a house the size of Pemberley!

WINTER WONDER ends on Christmas Day 1812, leaving most of the secrets exposed to all residents but the basic situations unresolved. West sets up yet another possible sequel with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who keeps Christmas in state at Rosings, suborning a dismissed servant for secrets about the Darcys and the Fitzwilliams. I DESPISE books that lack resolutions, considering it a writer’s cop-out. The action is slice of life, events as the parties act and react in close proximity, each pursuing a personal agenda. Most have attitudes much more modern than Regency. (Darcy and Elizabeth are quite understanding about Mrs. Bennet’s sexual intimacy with Mr. Maxwell, who runs the Meryton bookshop!)

I have problems with word choice. No one smiles, grins, or grimaces--they all “smirk” when they speak, regardless of the context. Many of them are repeatedly “smug,” again without reference to situation. To “rough” someone up is not the same word as “ruff.”

WINTER WONDER has many well-developed situations and acceptable characterization, but its abrupt beginning and lack of resolution leave me most seriously displeased. (B-)
 
Agatha Christie’s short story “A Christmas Tragedy” was originally published in 1932 in her anthology The Thirteen Problems. It is available as part of Miss Marple: The Complete Short Stories bundle available for Kindle.

Miss Jane Marple of St Mary Mead belongs to the Tuesday Night Club, along with Sir Henry Clithering, late of Scotland Yard; Colonel Arthur Bantry and his wife Dolly; Dr. Lloyd; and Jane Helier, the actress. Members take turns telling stories of mysteries they’ve encountered in real life. Miss Marple tells the story of Mr. and Mrs. Sanders, a young married couple she met at the Keston Spa Hydro at Christmas time many years before. When she meets them, she’s convinced that Sanders plans to kill his wife. She sees two “accidents” in which Mrs. Sanders might have died. But there is no evidence, Mrs. Sanders reports Miss Marple’s cautions to her husband, and he murders her before Miss Marple can design a way to trap him. But she does discover how he killed Gladys when he has an air-tight alibi.

Christie wrote puzzle plots with little characterization or setting, often with a locked room or otherwise “impossible” crime. “A Christmas Tragedy” fits this bill, but it’s too short to display her plotting virtuosity. Ir reads as an outline or a summary, while the solution depends on a highly unlikely coincidence.

“A Christmas Tragedy” is interesting as a curiosity from the Golden Age, proof that even Dame Agatha sometimes fell short. (D)
 
Cassandra B. Leigh’s WORTHY OF BEING PLEASED is her 2016 variant on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It is the second in her Proud Beaux series of novels, available in free or inexpensive e-book format.

Augusta Hawthorne is chaperone for her beautiful niece Geneva Hawthorne, the Incomparable of the London Season. At Almack’s Augusta, who considers herself a spinster at age 29 and wears lace caps, meets Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam, returned from the Peninsular War on leave for the Christmas holidays. They quickly fall in love, but Fitzwilliam makes no declaration before returning to duty in Spain. He’s the second son of the Earl of Matlock, dependent on his Army pay, with no home to offer her, no prospects, and no assurance that he will return alive. Will his pride and financial situation prevent their happiness?

WORTHY OF BEING PLEASED received high Amazon reviews, to the point that I wondered if I were reading the same story. Its premise is good. Most readers of Austen’s original like the Colonel and are happy to see him in his own story. Augusta Hawthorne and her family are attractive and believable, as are Fitzwilliam’s parents, Alexander and Eleanor Fitzwilliam, the Earl and Countess of Matlock. Both families are close and loving.

So what’s the problem? One is that Leigh’s research is not very thorough. She’s unfamiliar with military usage (a military man would never confuse a siege with an assault), and it’s unlikely that a colonel would be fighting on the assault with a musket like a common infantry man complete with knapsack. The meals Leigh describes follow the modern pattern of entree, side dishes, and dessert, rather than the elaborate sequence of courses, each of which presented simultaneously several different main dishes along with both savory and sweet accompaniments. Leigh also seems uncertain about the duration of the Season. Wiki says it began sometime after the end of the Christmas season (Twelfth Night, January 6) and ended by midsummer (mid to late June). In WORTHY OF BEING PLEASED, Leigh has it begin sometime before Christmas, not due to end until mid-August. I could go on.

A second problem is that about halfway through WORTHY OF BEING PLEASED, Leigh begins to quote in full every song, poem, note, and letter, whether it contributes anything of significance or not. These, along with the designs of rakes and fortune hunters against Geneva Hawthorne, make the plot feel padded. The story carries on much too long, especially after the main story line of Augusta and Fitzwilliam climaxes with their engagement.

Leigh is profligate in the number of characters in WORTHY OF BEING PLEASED, introducing additional family members, most of the people who attend Almack’s, servants of all the major characters, various shopkeepers, and assorted soldiers. Shifts in point of view between characters help to develop some, but the changes disrupt the flow of the story. Eliminating or consolidating the tangential characters would concentrate focus on the main story line. What bothers me most about Leigh’s character development is the endless repetition of angst. The Countess agonizes over this dangerous profession, and the Earl fumes because the Colonel’s pride won’t let him take a non-combat assignment or accept more financial support. Richard Fitzwilliam goes over his pain about his status as a second son that leaves him in poverty and without immediate expectations that would allow him to marry Augusta and keep her in the style to which she’s accustomed. It gets old, quick, especially since Leigh tells readers (long before he finds out) that Fitzwilliam will inherit a considerable landed estate from the Countess’s uncle and possibly his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s personal fortune; he knows he’ll receive some £30,000 on his mother’s death.

WORTHY OF BEING PLEASED has some appealing changes from the original, but it needs a strong editor to maximize its potential to please. (C-)
 
THE MERCHANT OF MENACE is Jill Churchill’s cozy Christmas novel from1999. It features Jane Jeffry.

Christmas is well underway for Jane Jeffry. She’s been manipulated into hostessing a post-caroling neighborhood potluck dinner, to be followed the next day by a Christmas cookie swap party. Anxious about meeting her significant other’s mother for the first time, she’s forced to have Addie VanDyne stay in her guest room because Mel’s furnace has gone out. Hillbillies, the Johnsons, have moved into the rental house next door and tastelessly overdecorated the house for Christmas, complete with enough lights and loud holiday music to be picked up by Skylab. To top it all off, her neighbor has arranged for obnoxious local TV “investigative reporter” Lance King to cover the caroling dinner. Known for his ambush-interview style and his ability to twist anything into attention-grabbing headlines, Jane does not want him in her house. After his intro hints of evil lurking under the peaceful facade of the neighborhood, King’s body is found impaled on the antlers of a life-sized reindeer on the Johnsons’ front lawn. He’d apparently fallen from their roof with its life-sized creche. But what was he doing up there? And who made the second line of footprints to the ladder?

I’m giving up at about halfway. For one thing, I don’t much like Jane Jeffry. Her older son Mike is in college, but she lets her friends and neighbors peer-pressure her into things she does not want to do and then feels imposed upon. Sensitive to being “a bit older” than Mel, Jane lets Addie VanDyne to walk all over her, accepting her critical remarks, her ”improvement” of the party preparations, and Addie’s complete rearrangement of the guest room furniture. Jane seems joined at the hip with next-door neighbor Shelley Nowack, who is bossy and opinionated. Churchill’s use of limited third person point of view through Jane does not make Jane a more appealing character.

The only clue to the location of the story is in a throwaway line about a neighbor working in Chicago. The holiday season serves primarily as a source of stress. The Johnsons, to the midpoint of THE MERCHANT OF MENACE, serve only as comic relief, with their garish decorations as the basis for an outre murder.

Mel VanDyne is an experienced cop as well as Jane’s boyfriend. He’s woefully naive (or extra manipulative) about women, setting Jane up in front of his mother so that she has no choice but to offer Addie hospitality. Then he promptly disappears until time for the dinner. My final straw is his violation of what must be standard police policies in dealing with Jane and Shelley. Jane lives next door to the crime scene, she had been vocal in her opposition to Lance King in her house, and she’d insisted that he not be allowed to do the live spot about the party. For part of the period in which King died, she has no alibi, having secreted herself in a bathroom to conceal her rage from her guests. She is at least a potential witness, at most a prime suspect. Yet Mel discuses the case with Jane and Shelley the afternoon after the murder, covering the autopsy report, witness statements so far, and the police theory of the death. Too much for me, even in a cozy.


No grade for THE MERCHANT OF MENACE because not finished.
 
A VERY MERRY MASQUERADE is Meg Osborne’s 2016 Christmas novella variant of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It is available in free or inexpensive Kindle format.

****POSSIBLE SPOILERS****

Mr. Gardiner’s illness prevents their family coming to Longbourn for Christmas, so Mrs. Gardiner invites Jane and Elizabeth Bennet to London for two weeks for the holidays. Elizabeth and Mrs. Bennet are pleased since it may put Jane in Charles Bingley’s company again. But Caroline Bingley ignores Jane’s letter announcing her arrival and, when the Bennet sisters call, refuses to receive them. Bingley and Fitzwilliam Darcy encounter them in the park, Bingley invites the women to Caroline’s Christmas Eve ball. Matters are soon put right between both couples.

A VERY MERRY MASQUERADE takes its title from the New Year’s Eve masquerade ball at which Darcy proposes to Elizabeth. It’s a gentle read with minimal angst. Darcy gets to know Elizabeth better in London and realizes that, just as he would not want to be judged by the behavior of his aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh, it’s unfair to judge the two older Bennet sisters by the rest of the family. Aside from verbal digs at Elizabeth from Caroline Bingley, there’s no opposition to Darcy’s match.

Some things do bother me. One involves agreement in number between possessive and objective case pronouns with indefinite pronouns as antecedents. Singular indefinite pronouns, such as someone, anyone, no one, nobody, require “his or hers” or “him or her” (for instance, “Someone left his or her book on my desk.”) Another is the elaborate business of Jane and Elizabeth exchanging masks for the masquerade ball. I do not discern its purpose. Most of all, I dislike Osborne’s version of Darcy. He daydreams about home and family at Christmas but leaves Georgiana at Pemberley alone while he’s in London with the Bingleys. When Elizabeth asks about Georgiana, he excuses her absence with Georgiana’s youth and dislike of Society. Society is one thing, but only brother is quite another!

A VERY MERRY MASQUERADE is pleasant though not memorable. (C)
 
CHRISTMAS SLAY RIDE is Jack Smith’s accounts of seven horrific murders that occurred on or about Christmas Day. All are from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is available in free or inexpensive Kindle format. I do not find a publication date.

***SPOILERS***

Stories in CHRISTMAS SLAY RIDE include “The Ashland Tragedy” from 24 December 1881, in which three murdered bodies were recovered from a burned house in Ashland, Kentucky. Someone battered a crippled teenaged boy Robert Gibbons and two teenaged girls Fanny Gibbons and Emma Carrico to death; the guilty parties raped the girls and ignited the house to conceal the crime. One of the criminals George Ellis confessed and turned state’s evidence; he received life imprisonment, but a mob lynched him. Two others George Craft and William Neal, against whom his testimony was the only evidence, hanged for the murders, each protesting his innocence on the gallows.

“Christmas Eve Combustion” deals with the death by spontaneous human combustion (SHC) of a Mrs. Rooney of Seneca, Illinois, on in the night of 24 December 1885. Her husband Patrick Rooney died in an adjacent room of smoke inhalation; the hired man John Lawson, asleep upstairs in a closed-off room, died two weeks later of progressive damage to his lungs from smoke inhalation. Smith’s account defines SHC and gives the characteristics by which it is identified.

“Delia’s Gone” is the real-life murder source of the many versions of a popular folk ballad; Johnny Cash’s version is “Delia’s Gone,” while Bob Dylan’s longer cover is simply “Delia.” Both are available on YouTube. Delia Green was a fourteen-year-old in Savannah, Georgia, shot to death by her fourteen-year-old lover Moses “Cooney” Houston after an argument at a carousing party in the early hours of Christmas Day 1900. Houston’s only explanation was “she called me a s** of a b**ch.” Rumors said she had been a teenaged prostitute, and they’d quarreled over her clients. Because Georgia then had no juvenile court system in operation, Houston was tried and sentenced as an adult, but he served only twelve years of a life sentence before parole.

“The Holyhead Terror” occurred on Christmas Day 1909 in Holyhead, North Wales. After a complicated sexual relationship marked by extreme violence, retired corporal William Murphy of the Royal Anglesey Engineers strangled his lover Gwen Ellen Jones. To be sure she was dead, he cut her throat, then dragged the body to a storm drain where he tried to drown her, just in case she wasn’t yet dead. He hanged for his crime.

“Changing of the Guard” covers the murder early on 26 December 1920 of gangster Edward “Monk” Eastman. After a major early criminal career, Eastman enlisted in the United States Army to avoid a prison sentence; he was an exemplary soldier and returned to the U.S. as a decorated war hero. He soon returned to opium smuggling and sales as well as the protection racket. Joseph Bohan, a Prohibition agent, turned himself in for the killing but claimed self-defense; he served only a few months of a three-year sentence before being paroled. Rumor had it that Bohan’s motive for the murder had been a quarrel over his cut from Eastman’s dope dealing.


“The Adonis Club Masacre” [sic] relates the stories of murders in the early hours of 26 December 1925 in and outside the Adonis Social Club in Brooklyn. All three dead men were members of the Irish White Hand criminal gang, set up to oppose the Irish Black Hand gang. The dead included gang leader Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan, his good friend and adviser Aaron Harms, and gang member Cornelius “Needles” Ferry. The Irishmen apparently drank themselves into belligerence, invaded the Italian Adonis Club hangout, and provoked the violence in which they died. The police arrested eight Italians, one of them Al Capone who’d come home to New York for the holidays; the men were arraigned but never tried because no witness could be convinced to testify against them. The murders were never solved.

The final and arguably most horrific of the crimes in CHRISTMAS SLAY RIDE is “The Lawson Family Massacre.” On Christmas Day 1929, Charles Lawson took his wife and eight children into town in Stokes County, North Carolina, to buy new holiday clothing and have a family photograph made. When they returned home, oldest son Arthur left for Germantown to visit an uncle. Lawson then began the process of murdering two of his daughters Carrie and MayBell, his wife Fannie, seventeen-year-old daughter Marie, sons James and Raymond, and infant daughter Mary Lou. He laid out each body with arms crossed across chest and head elevated on a stone, then disappeared into the woods where he committed suicide some hours later. There was no police investigation, so motive remains unknown. Lawson did have a history and reputation for domestic abuse, and there were rumors that he’d sexually abused Marie, impregnating her, and could not face the shame that would come to his family.

The stories in CHRISTMAS SLAY RIDE seem to have nothing in common except the dates. They read like newspaper articles with little background and no revelation of character for either victims or killers. So little information is given that it’s difficult to become involved emotionally in the tales. Sources listed include Internet sites as well as published accounts, but no notes give specific sources for facts. The writing style is bland and simplistic. Don’t bother. (F)
 
MISUNDERSTOOD is Reina M. Wiliams’s 2014 Christmas novella variant of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s set at Pemberley, ending with Twelfth Night. It is available as a free or inexpensive e-book.

MISUNDERSTOOD presumes familiarity with other of Williams’s variants and sequels, using a multitude of their couples as guests at the Pemberley Christmas house party. They include Colonel James Fitzwilliam, Darcy’s cousin, and his pregnant wife, the former Kitty Bennet; Sir Camden _____ and his wife Georgiana; Anne de Bourgh and her husband Reverend Alfred Fitzwilliam, James’s brother; Mary Bennet and her husband Nathaniel Bingley, cousin to Charles Bingley; Charles and Jane Bennet Bingley, who have a young son Charles; and Elizabeth and Darcy, who have a four-month-old son Edward. Also included are Maria Lucas, formerly Kitty’s best friend, and former Lieutenant Malcolm Massey Denny, who’s now sold out of the militia and the Army, a close friend of Sir Camden. Only Denny and, to a lesser extent, Maria Lucas are much developed.

The plot is simple. Maria Lucas, after a Season in London during which she became engaged to Sir Richard _____, feels herself disgraced because she broke off the engagement, disappointing her parents and sister Charlotte. She’s in love with another man. Denny has been introduced by Sir Camden as his good friend, so he’s been invited to Pemberley, but Darcy has grave reservations about Denny, believing he knew much more about Wickham’s elopement plans than he shared with Lydia’s would-be rescuers. Denny vaguely remembers Maria Lucas from Meryton, and he’s smitten with the poised young woman she’s become. Love quickly blooms, and within two weeks they are engaged despite Maria’s not disclosing her previous engagement. Will he understand, or will he judge her fickle and unsuitable to wive?

The most interesting aspect of MISUNDERSTOOD is the background of foster care, the workhouse, and orphanages in Denny’s early life. He’s matured greatly since his time in Meryton when he was George Wickham’s boon companion, going into the Regulars at the time of the elopement to find a new start. He’s now ready to settle down. However, his quick engagement to Maria reveals that his nature remains volatile.

Some editing problems stood out. “Ken” (noun) refers to a range of knowledge or signt; in MISUNDERSTOOD “habit” or “custom” would be more appropriate usage. Thin, delicate china is translucent, not opaque. One bares one’s soul, not bears. MISUNDERSTOOD is warm and sentimental with few surprises or suspense. (B)
 
HERLOCK HOLMES AND THE YULE-TIDE MYSTERY is one of Val Andrews’s novella additions to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal Sherlock Holmes canon. It was published in the United Kingdom in 1996 and reissued in e-book format in 2015.

Dr. John Watson is on his own in London one Christmas time in the 1890s, his wife Mary visiting family in Scotland, when he visits 221B Baker Street to wish his friend Sherlock Holmes the joy of the season. He’s present when Holmes interviews James Harding, a client with an unusual problem. Shortly before, he met Gerald MacMillan, previously totally unknown to him, who invited him to a Christmas house party at his home Shaw Manor near Henfield, in Sussex. The party is to last from before Christmas until after New Year’s, and MacMillan insists he bring along two or three of his friends. Harding is suspicious, so he consults Holmes about accepting the invitation. Holmes not only suggests Harding accept, but he and Watson will be Harding’s “friends” who accompany him. Investigation reveals that Gerald MacMillan is a con man specializing in charity scams. Holmes senses a crime in the making, but what? Can he figure it out and prevent it? Does it involve the missing will of MacMillan’s uncle Cedric Reynard?

Andrews is faithful to the canonical characters, and additions such as Harding and MacMillan are recognizable type characters Conan Doyle often used. Characterization is minimal. Watson’s sentiments and bits of atmospheric description emphasize the season.

The plot, however, seems to get away from Andrews. There’s continual speculation between Holmes and Watson over MacMillan’s intentions. A wronged nephew Arthur Fox has only a short period left in which to find the his uncle’s latest will before MacMillan inherits under an earlier one. Someone bashes in the head of their aunt, at a time when MacMillan seems to have a perfect alibi. When he confronts the killer, Holmes is abducted at gunpoint. A maid at Shaw Manor Jane, beloved by Arthur Fox, disappears until the following Christmas. Andrews goes into great detail of each day at the Manor, but simply recounting what happens. The plot continues way too long following Holmes’s solution to the crime. The subplot involving Fox and the maid is tangential at best, stretching the search for her over a year’s time makes the novella even weaker, and Jane’s fate in Victorian London with no money, no job, and no references is improbable. The killer’s planned alibi is neat.

SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE YULE-TIDE MYSTERY falls way short of the best Sherlock Holmes additions. (D)
 
A VERY MARY CHRISTMAS is another of Leenie Brown’s novella variants on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It’s available in e-book format, but I found no date of publication.

As the title implies, A VERY MARY CHRISTMAS focuses on Mary Bennet, third daughter of the Bennets of Longbourn. It opens in early December with preparations underway for the weddings of Jane and Charles Bingley and of Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam Darcy. Mary, never her mother’s favorite, bears Mrs. Bennet’s emotionally abusive criticism daily for her failure to secure Mr. Collins in marriage; she proclaims to Mary’s face and to all who attend Meryton’s parish church that Mary’s destined to become a spinster, forced to earn her living as a governess or a paid companion. She uses Mary to fetch and carry and cater to her every whim. Mary is attracted to Nicholas Hammond, who enjoys her conversation and company and wants to marry. Hammond is master of Rosemoore, neighboring estate to Longbourn, a pleasant sensible man, but financially responsible for his extravagant parents in Bath and for his scrapegrace younger brother Alfred who’s still at University. He can’t afford to marry, but he’s attracted to Mary and becomes more so when he accidentally learns that she plans to leave Longbourn for good. In the meantime, Alfred Hammond and his good friend Ethan Whittemore are sent down and become involved in gambling and reckless escapades with Lieutenant George Wickham. Can Nicholas see his way clear to address Mary before she departs Meryton after her sisters’ wedding?

Mary Bennet in A VERY MARY CHRISTMAS is more mature and self-aware than the original. She has no confidence in her appearance and no dowry, and, with her mother’s constant assurances that men do not want a sensible, serious wife, she doubts her ability to attract a husband. Unable to bear her mother’s treatment, she goes about creating an alternative life for herself. She proves herself when Nicholas Hammond is injured in a riding accident and she organizes his transportation and medical care. In view of this strength of character, her passivity in the denouement is inconsistent (though possibly reflective of a Regency woman’s situation}. Nicholas Hammond is a realistic character, a very suitable choice for Mary. Alfred Hammond and Whittemore are less believable; at first concerned only with careless fun and escapades, they abruptly become young men determined to get Mary and Nicholas married. The change is too quick to be convincing.

Several gratifying character change include Charles Bingley telling Caroline to her face to stay out of his business and to stop criticizing Elizabeth and Jane’s social skills and standing. Mr. Bennet shuts up the worst of Mrs. Bennet’s attacks on Mary. Karma deals finally with Wickham.

A VERY MARY CHRISTMAS is satisfying with appealing protagonists and sufficient problems to add drama without excessive angst. (A-)
 
INSPECTOR PROBY’S CHRISTMAS is a book In John Gano’s mystery-thriller series featuring Detective Inspector Jim Proby of the Hampton Police Department. Its action covers most of the Christmas period, beginning in police procedural format, then switching to thriller. INSPECTOR PROBY’S CHRISTMAS was originally published in 1994 and then reissued in e-book format in 2016.

****SPOILERS****

When Diana Mary Smith, wife of crime boss John Percy “Hippo” Doyle is shot twice in the head with a shotgun, Inspector Proby becomes the officer in charge of the investigation. Then seventeen-year-old Mary Grogan is killed in the same manner, followed shortly by Anne Bryant, followed by an attempt on an Oriental prostitute Lomi, who escapes the shotgun to be killed in hospital. Proby believes from the second murder that he’s dealing with a serial killer, since the women appear to have no personal connections, the modus operandi is the same, and all seem victims of opportunity. About halfway, Henry Bryant, who’s having a torrid affair with Proby’s wife Sheila, is revealed as the killer, before Proby recognizes the inconsistency in his story or learns of the affair. Bryant had killed three other women to cover the murder of his wife. Bryant is a boffin in Counter-Terrorism in the Ministry of Defense and well-connected both politically and socially; he’s left no physical evidence, and he’s protected by his friends and his position. Can Proby bring home Bryant’s crimes?

Sense of place and atmosphere are good. A Christmas gift points Proby in the right direction to solve the case.

I had to force myself to finish INSPECTOR PROBY’S CHRISTMAS. The plot device of hiding a personal murder within what appears a number of serial killings has been used before, in Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders, for one. The switch from mystery to thriller is abrupt, almost as if Proby won’t solve the case without help. The whole story line is too long drawn out. The decision to leave Proby on the case after Sheila’s affair becomes known is unrealistic. :buttrock

The main problem is that I don’t like the characters. None of Proby’s fellow police are much characterized; many have only one name given. His superiors seem more concerned with external pressure (the Chief Constable) and avoiding responsibility (Chief Superintendent Rankin) than with catching a serial killer. Sheila Proby is years younger than her husband, a serial adulterer with a taste for rough sex who puts on a show of ideal wife. When Bryant tells her that Proby suspects him, she agrees to find out as much as she can about her husband’s case and pass the information on to Bryant. She leaves Proby, comes back, and never even apologizes.

Most of all, I dislike Proby. He presents more as a plodder who’s not an effective police-team leader than a well-respected detective. He decides intuitively on Bryant’s guilt and does not budge despite lack of evidence. When he discovers Sheila’s affair with Bryant, they talk for five hours on Christmas Day (content not given). but he does nothing. He’s apparently not even indignant with her. He does not report this complication to his superiors; indeed, when a disgruntled officer does tell the Chief Constable, Proby argues that this does not merit his removal from the case. When his plan to trap Bryant in the act of killing a blackmailer goes pear-shaped and newly-promoted Sergeant Julie ___ is gravely wounded, Proby does not go to the hospital at any point during her four-hour surgery. He’s at home with his wife, having sex. Nasty.

:werdINSPECTOR PROBY’S CHRISTMAS simply wasn’t worth the time. (F)
 
CHRISTMAS AT NETHERFIELD is Nora Kipling’s Christmastime novella variant of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It was published in e-book format in 2016.

Elizabeth Bennet, lonely at Longbourn after Jane’s marriage to Charles Bingley, draws closer to younger sister Mary while deploring the behavior of Kitty and Lydia who are even more uncontrolled in their exuberance. The Bennet women are thrilled to learn that Bingley plans to spend the holiday season at Netherfield Park so that Jane may enjoy a family Christmas, reviving his family tradition of a house party and ball. He’s invited friends including Fitzwilliam Darcy. Both Darcy and Elizabeth are uneasy about their renewed contact, since Darcy is still depressed that Elizabeth has rejected his two proposals and Elizabeth is uncertain about her feelings for him. She fears that she’s destined to become an old maid. She’s more than ever convinced that she’s lost his love when she responds in kind to Caroline Bingley’s digs at her and her family. How can they get past their misunderstandings?

CHRISTMAS AT NETHERFIELD is a charming variant, with minimal angst. Darcy tells Elizabeth about George Wickham’s true character, so she foils Wickham’s plan to elope with Lydia from Longbourn. Mrs. Bennet is less anti-Elizabeth than in some variants, while Mary is sensible and well-mannered, an accomplished pianist. Mr. Bennet is active in bringing Elizabeth and Darcy together. Caroline Bingley is vicious, so it’s satisfying to see her receive the same kind of veiled insults she’s heaped on Elizabeth.

I do have a few problems. How does Caroline know that Darcy has proposed twice to Elizabeth, and when was the second proposal? There’s a reference to Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s visit to Longbourn, but there’s nothing about when or where Darcy proposed again. The length of the epilogue detracts from the climax of the plot--Elizabeth’s acceptance. Editing problems include use of “it’s” as the possessive pronoun; “tombs” instead of “tomes” (books); and “lanks” of Darcy’s hair. Netherfield is fully decorated when Darcy arrives for the house party in mid-December but, during the Regency period, seasonal decoration was done on Christmas Eve and stayed in place through Twelfth Night (January 6).

CHRISTMAS AT NETHERFIELD is sweetly sentimental. (A-)
 
“Miss Bingley’s Christmas” is Renata McMann and Summer Hanford’s short story variant of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It is available in inexpensive or free e-book format.

Caroline Bingley and her family are spending Christmas in London instead of at Pemberley as she’d planned. Caroline is hosting a family Christmas Day dinner with the Darcy siblings as honored guests at the Hursts’ home in Grosvenor Square. On Christmas Eve she and Louisa have visited a flower market in an unfamiliar and unsavory neighborhood when they’re caught in a jam of coaches at an accident; when hours pass in the cold and their coach hasn’t been freed, Caroline decides they must walk home through a strengthening snow storm. Louisa is newly pregnant, and the women are soon lost and in trouble. They are rescued by Jane and Elizabeth Bennet and Mrs. Gardiner, who take them home to Gracechurch Street to clean and warm up. Because of the storm, the women must remain overnight with the Gardiners, with Mr. Hurst even, at Mrs. Gardiner’s invitation, moving the Christmas dinner to their home. Caroline is at first furious to have to accept help from people so beneath her socially. They are after all, gasp, in trade! She’s certain it’s all a plot to throw Jane Bennet back into Charles Bingley’s path, but as she spends the two days at the Gardiners’ home, her perception about people and social class gradually change. She even realizes that she’d never had a chance to marry Darcy. And at the same dinner, she does meet a handsome young widower in trade Joseph Taylor, Mrs. Gardiner’s brother-in-law,

It’s hard not to compare “Miss Bingley’s Christmas” with Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Caroline Bingley is negative enough to do Scrooge full justice and, like him, changes as she observes first hand people about whom she’d made unexamined assumptions. She demonstrates her changed ideas by appreciating the similarities between businessmen Taylor and her late father, her entertaining of young Mary Taylor, and her kindly assisting Georgiana with her shyness in company. “Miss Bingley’s Christmas” is a genuine feel-good read. (A)
 
THE FROZEN LAKE by Elizabeth Edmondson was originally published in 2005 and reissued in e-book format in 2015. Its prologue dates from April 1921; the first chapter opens near Christmas 1936.

Alix Richardson seems to be the protagonist. I say “seems” because to this point (ten percent), sll Edmondson has done is introduce members of the Richardson and Grindley families, near neighbors in Westmoreland, as they wend their ways home for Christmas. Among others, one is Hal, the Grindley black sheep, owner of one-third of the shares at a time of crisis in the family plumbing fixtures business. Alix has cut herself off from Wyncrag and her famly to live a Bohemian life in London. Her twin Edwin is involved with a Jewish Viennese refugee. Their grandmother Lady Richardson rules the family with the subtlety of Vlad the Impaler. Saul Richardson is an MP, junior member of His Majesty’s Government, and adulterer; his wife Jane is bitterly discontent as a politician’s wife. Perdita Richardson is a boarder at the Yorkshire Ladies College, which seems more reformatory than school. There’s some major scandal in the Richardson family history. Other apparently unrelated individuals add to the head count.

The subtitle of THE FROZEN LAKE is “A Vintage Mystery,” which implies to me a Golden Age mystery, though its publication date indicates not so. Edmondson so far has provided no reason for setting it during theThirties. She has introduced no specific problem, though she’s included several suitable candidates for murder. Almost all the story has been exposition, not especially well handled. It’s as if a mass of unrelated information shifts before the reader’s eyes and refuses to come into focus. Frankly, I don’t care enough about any of the characters to keep squinting, looking for a pattern.

No grade because not finished.
 
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