Merry & Bright (with murder on the side) Reading

by Sharon Kitchens & Michelle Souliere

The sidewalks in Portland, Maine are dusted with snow. Freshly cut pines are hung about interiors. The morning walk leaves one red-cheeked. Wood crackles in the fireplace. Grocery carts are filled with bags of sugar, bottles of spices, and blocks of butter.

If you’re like Michelle and I, tis also the season for holiday murder mysteries. Books with a murder or two or three sprinkled in. Naughty villains far more tart than sweet. Icy stares punctuate the already chilly air. And, that’s not ruby satin on the floor!

Following are our recommendations for holiday reading:

Sharon:

Christmas Presents by Lisa Unger

I really wanted to be able to read and recommend Lisa Unger’s Christmas Presents, but alas I hit a snag as I’m still waiting in line for a print or audio copy via the library. I’ve read a glowing review and heard part of the first chapter and both have me excited to read this. So, consider this one a not quite recommendation….rather more of a suggestion.

Here’s the gist - Madeline Martin, a bookshop owner with a tragic past is currently caring for her ailing father who happens to be a former sheriff. She’s the only surviving victim of Evan Handy, the man who was convicted of murdering her best friend a decade ago. He’s also suspected in the disappearance of other women. The thing is, since Handy went to jail, other women have gone missing. Are the crimes connected? Was Evan Handy innocent after all? Or was there some else there that night?  Enter Harley Granger, a failed novelist turned true crime podcaster, who has a whole lot of questions. 

Sounds good, doesn’t it? 

The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict

There’s a theme to Benedict’s Christmas mysteries — The Christmas Murder (2022) and Murder on the Christmas Express (2023).

A snow storm bears down trapping a group of people together who have a sordid past. The primary character is returning home and to a past that has haunted them. Things turn deadly and they must figure out how to survive.

I was utterly charmed by The Christmas Murder. A classic country house murder mystery that’s Agatha Christie meets the iconic board game Clue.  

Twelve clues. Twelve keys. Twelve days of Christmas. But who will survive until Twelfth Night? 

Lily Armitage never intended to return to Endgame House - the grand family home where her mother died twenty-one Christmases ago…Until, that is, she receives a letter from her aunt promising that the game's riddles will give her the keys not only to Endgame, but to its darkest secrets, including the identity of her mother's murderer.

Lily will have to keep her wits about her, because not everyone is playing fair, and there's no telling how many will die before the winner is declared.

Murder on the Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict

Murder on the Orient Express is one of my favorite Agatha Christie stories — Evil Under the Sun is the other— and yet I didn’t enjoy this book. I’m including because if you come across one of Benedict’s Christmas murder books, you’ll likely see the other.  Go with The Christmas Murder Game! 

It’s Christmas Eve, and former Met detective Roz Parker is on her way home from London to Scotland during a snow storm to be with her very pregnant daughter. When the trail derails in the middle of nowhere, the passengers only have one another, and not all of them will reach their holiday celebrations. As a killer tries to pick passengers off one by one, Roz can’t resist one last investigation. 

Honorable mention…The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell

The story takes place during the summer, but if you’re like me and are passionately devoted to “The Great British Baking Off,” then you’ll see how all the bread, cake, and pie served up on a leafy Vermont estate justifies its inclusion. 

Every summer for the past decade, half a dozen amateur bakers have descended on the manicured grounds of Grafton — the aforementioned estate — that is not only the filming site for the hit show “Bake Week” but also the childhood home of the show’s famous host, celebrated baker and veteran judge Betsy Martin.

This year she’s joined by award-winning baker Archie Morris. It’s the first time in the show’s history that Betsy has shared judging duties with another host.

As the baking competition commences, things begin to go awry. At first, it’s merely sabotage—sugar replaced with salt—but when a body is discovered, everyone is a suspect.

Also: The Shining by Stephen King – for all the dysfunctional families out there. A smart story that’s significantly different from Stanley Kubrick’s big screen adaptation.   

Michelle:

I would be remiss, when writing about holiday reads, if I didn’t mention the British Library Tales of the Weird and their ever-expanding line of anthology titles, which includes each year a Yuletide offering of spooky seasonal tales.

Spirits of the Season: Christmas Hauntings, edited by Tanya Kirk

One of my favorites in this vein so far is their 2018 volume, Spirits of the Season, edited by Tanya Kirk.  This one is full of the work of some classic tale-spinners, such as favorites Algernon Blackwood (“The Kit-Bag”), A.M. Burrage’s “Smee” (which somehow never gets old), and M.R. James (“The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance”), but also some grandes dames like Amelia Edwards (“The Four-Fifteen Express”) and Marjorie Bowen (“The Prescription”).  

M­­­­­­y favorite in Spirits of the Season’s table of contents is one I’d never read before, but found tremendously creepy and Christmassy -- H. Russell Wakefield’s ill-starred exploration of “Lucky’s Grove.”  You will never look at a snowy grove of evergreens in quite the same way again.

I try to read one of these books every year, and for 2023 I’m looking forward to dipping into either Chill Tidings or Haunters at the Hearth, both of which are edited by Tanya Kirk.

Alexandra Benedict’s Christmas mysteries

Alongside the British Library collections of Christmas confections, I try to read a couple of novels in this vein, and this year I’m reading Alexandra Benedict’s Murder on the Christmas Express, a fun little nail-biter of a snowy journey.  Last year I read her Christmas Murder Game, which was tremendous fun.  Christmas Express is very different from the feel of Murder Game, certainly not as cozy, but its narrator is once again a likeable and compelling character, and the case is enough to get everyone to put their deerstalker hat on, a la Sherlock Holmes.

Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon

I mention Benedict’s newest Christmas puzzle because it reminded me of Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon (part of the British Library’s “Crime Classics” series).  Now I’m re-reading it, and enjoying it possibly even more than the first time I read it.  In Mystery in White (1937), once again our winter train ride gets waylaid by weather, and last-minute holiday travelers get stuck on the tracks rather than getting to their destinations.

As with any good stranded-travelers story, our characters make up quite a little grab bag, but luckily the majority of them are quite delightful.  Having quitted their train in hopes of finding their way to a nearby station with actual running trains, our fools find themselves stranded instead in a Goldilocks-type cottage, replete with cozy fires and everything ready for, if not them, then someone who is expected.

Midway through, even “the Bore” of the crowd (previously reprehensible) seems to become more human, while the villain has disappeared, at least temporarily, with an unearthly shriek (nobody is too worried by his absence, quite the opposite).  All in all it is a delightful, snowy romp, full up with miniature dramas, suspenseful forays into the continuous blizzard in search of murder weapons, corpses, villains, plus other victims to rescue and ensconce, and interjections from Lydia, who has her heart set on a jolly holiday, and keeps saying things like “I believe we’re going to have a happy Christmas after all!”

One of the extra bit of a treat in the book (for me, anyways!) comes from the inclusion of Mr. Maltby, a member of the Royal Psychical Society, and by way of his undercurrent of ghostly interests, our characters periodically check in on their more wayward feelings about whether or not there are various spooky influences at work in the little house and its furnishings.

To give you just a taste of this, here are Lydia and Jessie quizzing each other in an attempt to entertain and distract themselves from other more serious matters at hand:

“All right.  My ghost meets your ghost.  Then what happens?”

“A lot of little ghosts.  Oh, my goodness, I’m going dippy, but if you’re going dippy anyhow you might as well choose a pleasant way.  If a lot of little ghosts would be pleasant?  Imagine them running about all over the house, dodging under beds and hiding round corners and scampering up and down the stairs!”

“I think they’d be rather fun.”

“Then we’ll have ‘em at the Christmas feast to-morrow.  You haven’t forgotten to-morrow’s Christmas, have you?”

 

Any one of these titles is definitely worth sitting down to, in a cozy spot with a pile of cookies and a hot beverage of your choice!  We’ll have other wintry recommendations as the season moves along, but these should get you primed for good ol’ Santa Claus’s arrival.