Rest Ye Murdered Gentlemen / Vicki Delany

3 out of 5 stars

In Rudolph, New York, it’s Christmastime all year long. But this December, while the snow-lined streets seem merry and bright, a murder is about to ruin everyone’s holiday cheer…

As the owner of Mrs. Claus’s Treasures, Merry Wilkinson knows how to decorate homes for the holidays. That’s why she thinks her float in the semi-annual Santa Claus parade is a shoo-in for best in show. But when the tractor pulling Merry’s float is sabotaged, she has to face facts: there’s a Scrooge in Christmas Town.

Merry isn’t ready to point fingers, especially with a journalist in town writing a puff piece about Rudolph’s Christmas spirit. But when she stumbles upon the reporter’s body on a late night dog walk—and police suspect he was poisoned by a gingerbread cookie crafted by her best friend, Vicky—Merry will have to put down the jingle bells and figure out who’s really been grinching about town, before Vicky ends up on Santa’s naughty list…

I tried to get ahold of this book for the Christmas season, but was way too late! But, since this author will be attending a conference that I will attend in August, I decided that I would read it anyway. I have previously read her Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mysteries, so I thought it would stand me in good stead to see what else she had to offer.

Imagine my surprise then, when I felt like I was re-reading the Bookshop Mysteries! There are so many details in common. The protagonists are both young women who moved away from small communities and returned, both of them have set up speciality shops, both have best friends who run bake shops, both re-encounter a man they used to date, both have dogs that they barely have time for, both meet an attractive man who has newly moved to the community, both of them discover dead bodies, both have a member of the police force that they don’t get along with, and neither of these women trust the police to fully investigate the deaths. That’s a lot of overlap.

Don’t get me wrong--I finished the book. It was good enough to hold my attention to the end, although I was pretty sure of the destination. There were details that were delightful. This one is set in Rudolph, N.Y., billing itself as Christmastown USA. The main character is called Merry of course and her father (born on Dec. 25) is Noel and he is a dead ringer for Santa Claus. Merry’s dog, a young Saint Bernard, is called Matterhorn (though she calls him Mattie most often). Delany shows talent in naming her characters although I raised an eyebrow when the BFF in this one was named Vicky!

I realize that if you enjoy a particular pattern, you will enjoy a repeat of it. Witness myself and my obsessive reading of Ilona Andrews’ writing. Those novels too repeat a formula over and over and I shamelessly enjoy them. So, if you enjoyed the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mysteries, I have absolutely no doubt that you will enjoy the Year-Round Christmas Mysteries and vice-versa.

Half Spent Was the Night / Ami McKay

3.5 stars out of 5

During the nights between Christmas and New Year's, the witches of New York--Adelaide Thom, Eleanor St. Clair and the youngest, Beatrice Dunn--gather before the fire to tell ghost stories and perform traditional Yuletide divinations. (Did you know that roasting chestnuts were once used to foretell one's fate?)
As the witches roast chestnuts and melt lead to see their fate, a series of odd messengers land on their doorstep bearing invitations for a New Year's Eve masquerade hosted by a woman they've never met. Gossip, dreams and portents follow, leading the witches to question the woman's motives. Is she as benevolent as she seems or is she laying a trap. And so, as Gilded-Age New York prepares to ring in the new year, the witches don their finery and heard for the ball, on the hunt for answers that might well be the end of them.

A charming little novella, perfect for the days leading up to the New Year’s celebration. I was surprised at how long a waiting list there was for this book at my public library! I didn’t get my paws on it until late January, well into the New Year. But I still enjoyed this gentle little historical urban fantasy.

Lovely uses of British Isles mythology and some intrigue made it a worthwhile reading experience for me. I will definitely be willing to read the author’s The Witches of New York for the background story.

The Advent Killer / Alastair Gunn

3 out of 5 stars

Christmas is coming. One body at a time. Three weeks before Christmas: Sunday, one a.m. A woman is drowned in her bathtub.  One week later: Sunday, one a.m. A woman is beaten savagely to death, every bone in her body broken.  Another week brings another victim.

As panic spreads across London, DCI Antonia Hawkins, leading her first murder investigation, must stop a cold, careful killer whose twisted motives can only be guessed at, before the next body is found. On Sunday.  When the clock strikes one . .

Somehow this murder mystery didn’t grab me the way some of them do. I started it in late December, but then had a long hiatus until finishing it in early January. It’s a solid enough story, with enough red herrings to keep me from being positive who dunnit until close to the end of the book.

My problem was that I didn’t really connect with the main character, Antonia Hawkins. She seemed to me to be rather thin-skinned and inept for someone who had risen as high in the ranks as she had. And I really disliked her tendency to mix her work and private life indiscriminately. I know that it can be hard to keep those lines from blurring, but Tonia seemed to just heave herself precipitously back into a work relationship with no self-reflection at all. And there’s far more snotty weeping that I care for in a main female character!

Nevertheless, it’s not a bad book and was certainly appropriate for the Christmas season. A few good murders keep the holiday from getting too saccharine sweet.

The Crossing Places / Elly Griffiths

4 out of 5 stars

When she’s not digging up bones or other ancient objects, quirky, tart-tongued archaeologist Ruth Galloway lives happily alone in a remote area called Saltmarsh near Norfolk, land that was sacred to its Iron Age inhabitants - not quite earth, not quite sea.
      When a child’s bones are found on a desolate beach nearby, Detective Chief Inspector Harry Nelson calls Galloway for help. Nelson thinks he has found the remains of Lucy Downey, a little girl who went missing ten years ago. Since her disappearance he has been receiving bizarre letters about her, letters with references to ritual and sacrifice.
      The bones actually turn out to be two thousand years old, but Ruth is soon drawn into the Lucy Downey case and into the mind of the letter writer, who seems to have both archaeological knowledge and eerie psychic powers. Then another child goes missing and the hunt is on to find her. 
      As the letter writer moves closer and the windswept Norfolk landscape exerts its power, Ruth finds herself in completely new territory – and in serious danger.

I’m still analyzing why I enjoyed this little mystery as much as I did. There are several factors, but I think I’m starting to put my finger on the appeal.

This book was like a cross between Lyn Hamilton’s Lara McClintoch mysteries and Steve Burrows' Birder Murder Mysteries. Like Hamilton’s main character, Lara McClintoch, Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway is an archaeologist. Like Steve Burrows’ main character, Domenic Jejeune, Ruth lives in Norfolk, in an isolated house on the saltmarsh.

Griffiths’ writing falls somewhere in between the two, not unusual for a first crime novel. Thankfully, she is much closer to Burrows in quality and her characters make up for a plot that lurches a bit from suspect to suspect.

Ruth Galloway is a wonderful main character. She is very, very good at her job (Iron Age archeology) but she is pushing 40, weighs more than she would like to, and is a bit sensitive about all the people around her who seem to think that marriage and children are the only possible fulfilling things in a woman’s life. I hear you, Ruth! Our Western culture has certainly decided that we women cannot possibly be happy without husbands and children and yet there are many of us out here who are doing just fine, thank you very much!

So, I obviously identify with Ruth, I adore reading about archaeology, I love Norfolk (although I have only visited there once), and I found the writing decent. The book encompasses both Christmas and New Year’s Eve, making it a wonderful little read during my Christmas vacation days from work. I will definitely be reading more about Ruth in the future!

I Saw Zombies Eating Santa Claus / S.G. Browne

3 out of 5 stars

He sees you when you’re sleeping . . . he knows when you’re undead. 

How does the leader of a failed zombie civil rights movement from California rescue a group of his undead brethren and help a lonely Breather girl as he hides from a band of medical researchers while disguised as Santa Claus? 

If you’ve never believed in Christmas miracles, then you wouldn’t understand. 

How could I resist this dark little comedy? As soon as I saw the title on my library’s catalogue, I knew that I had to read it this Christmas season!

It may not rank up there with It’s a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol, but it provided a little light relief during a season that can become rather overwhelming if one doesn’t take time to read a silly book.

Andy Warner, former zombie rights activist, escapes from the research facility where he has been held and experimented on, strips a Santa Claus in someone’s Christmas yard display, and tries to make his way through the world disguised as the jolly old elf. The author was obviously having fun with the whole concept.

Yes, there’s a bit of gore (this is a zombie book after all), but there’s also an uplifting story of a zombie who cares enough to make life better for a little girl with an alcoholic single-parent mother.

It’s not going to become an annual tradition for me, but it was a pleasant diversion this Christmas season.

Christmas Mourning / Margaret Maron

2 out of 5 stars

It's Christmas in rural North Carolina's Colleton County and Judge Deborah Knott is looking forward to a family celebration when a tragedy clouds the holiday season. A beautiful young cheerleader dies in a car crash and the community is devastated by her death. Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant soon learns that her death was not a simple accident, and more lives may be lost unless he and Deborah can discover why she died. 

I had hopes for this mystery, set during the Christmas season, featuring a husband & wife team, a Sheriff’s Deputy and a Judge. Yes, there is a crime and yes, they solve it, but OMG, the amount of irrelevant detail that I had to wade through it get to that!

I am not a big fan of the cozy mystery, so that was the majority of my problem. For lovers of this particular branch of the mystery genre, your experience will be more positive than mine. I do appreciate that knowing some details of the characters’ lives is a positive, but I felt absolutely bogged down in the all the intricate family details, the step-parent angst of Deborah, not to mention all the Christmas gift and food detail.

I’m not sure why every outfit that the Deborah wears needs to be described or why we need details about every meal. I do know, however, that other writers in this genre do exactly the same thing. I think that may be why I like Nordic noir, where the detectives are generally solitary men, eating sandwiches & drinking coffee and hoping that they still have a clean shirt, rather than all of the domestic detail.

Not a bad mystery, but a bit of a disappointment to me.

When Elves Attack / Tim Dorsey

3 out of 5 stars

Nobody does Florida weirdness quite like Tim Dorsey! Case in point: When Elves Attack, the New York Times bestselling author’s twisted Christmas present to his legion of adoring fans who can’t get enough of thrill-killer and Sunshine State historian Serge A. Storms, the most endearing psychopath since Dexter. Dorsey offers the perfect antidote for all those sappy feel-good holiday stories with this zany blockbuster extravaganza in which his wonderfully deranged serial killer Floridaphile delivers his special brand of Christmas cheer. 

”Wait up!” Coleman skipped alongside Serge. “But I still don’t get this elf thing. How can we be elves if the mall didn’t hire us?”
“And that’s what everyone thinks.” Serge skipped and waved at curious shoppers. “But there’s no law that says you can’t just unilaterally decide to be an elf, buy a costume and hit the mall. That’s the whole key to life: Fuck the conventional wisdom on elves.”
“So that makes us…”
“That’s right: wildcat elves.”
“What are they going to say?”
Serge stopped skipping. “It’s like clipboards. You walk around all smart and serious, writing on a clipboard, and people stand back in respect. Or orange cones. You can buy them at any Home Depot. Then you set them out according to your needs, and the public thinks “He must be official. He’s got orange cones.” Those are the big three: clipboards, orange cones, elf suits. People don’t question.”

Ah, the wisdom of the social-justice-minded serial killer, Serge, as imparted to his drug addled sidekick, Coleman.

This was a fun little holiday story, filled with darkly humourous situations, perfect for the overly sweet Christmas season. Learn how to use a deep fryer to blow up a hotel room, among other useful skills. Plus how to look official with a clipboard, orange cones, or an elf suit.

Hercule Poirot's Christmas / Agatha Christie

4 out of 5 stars

Motives for Murder: A fortune in uncut diamonds, hidden by an eccentric old man - A woman's love, too freely given - A business empire built on ruthlessness. Each of them may have been a motive for the brutal slaying of wealthy old Simeon Lee. Coupled with Lee's family, each member of which hated him and wished to see him dead, they present Hercule Poirot with a baffling challenge--one which the astute detective solves only through his uncanny ability to see "the little things."

What does one get M. Poirot for Christmas? A bloody good murder, that’s what!

I love watching the skillful set-up in Agatha Christie’s books—the details that she lovingly points out to us, designed to lead our thinking astray! An excellent red herring meant I was looking the wrong direction when M. Poirot did his big reveal. I was so sure that I had spotted the killer that I didn’t pay attention to anyone else! (Christie – 7, Wanda – 2 so far in my reading of her oeuvre).

The murder victim is deliciously hate-able, the potential murderers are suitably complex people, the motives abound, as does the blood. As Poirot points out, when we are being forced to visit family that we might not normally & there is pressure for a certain type of behaviour, murder becomes a real possibility! So don’t lean on your family members too hard this Christmas—give them and yourself a bit of breathing room and avoid family bloodshed.

Now is the Winter of my Discontent

It is winter in Canada and most particularly in my home province of Alberta.  We have been fortunate to avoid vast quantities of snow, even this late in the season.  The roads have not been axle deep in slush and our city has actually made good on its promise to get major routes sanded speedily.  Unfortunately, we all know that more snow is coming and that we probably have some very cold weather ahead of us too.  We have had one weekend in the -25 Celsius range and we all felt the bite.  That’s the temperature at which one has to think about plugging in the car at least an hour ahead of when one wants to use it.

            I am a chicken winter driver—not a good quality in a Canadian!  I am fortunate that our transit system in Calgary is reasonable for my needs and that I am willing to use it.  However, waiting in the cold for a bus or C-train is a tiresome process, especially as we approach the darkest days of the year.  Right now, I’m going to work in the dark and coming home in the almost-dark.  By 5:30 pm, there is no sign of daylight.

            I think our ancient ancestors were wise to schedule a celebration of light in the midst of all the darkness and cold.  Yule and its latest incarnation, Christmas, are just what we northern folks need to perk up our short, cold days.  The winter solstice will fall on December 21^st this year and I plan to recognize and celebrate that shortest day of the year and the gradual return of more sunshine hours. 

            Today, December 1^st, is my father’s birthday.  If he was still with us, he would have been 81 today.  As it is, he and my mother were killed in a car accident in 1996 and he is frozen in my memory at age 65.  I often wonder how life would have been different if that event had never occurred.  I suppose that I would be facing the same problems of my friends with elderly parents:  deteriorating health of those parents and the need for more care.  I can’t really feel lucky that my parents were killed so young, but I must confess that I sometimes feel fortunate to be able to avoid those issues.  My father, particularly, would not have been happy anywhere that did not allow him to have gunpowder and ammo in his sock drawer. 

            So I’m missing my parents today, planning a festive decorating evening and savouring the fact that the days will soon start to get longer again.   It’s a time of emotional conflict—a season during which many people want to spend happy times with friends and family (as do I), but tinged by the wish that I could have my two favourite people back, if only for an hour or two.  I’m trying to retain my patience with the decorating, the Christmas card issue, the need for gift shopping and the obligatory “festive” parties with people that I really couldn’t care less about.  Once again, I am trying to avoid the consumerism of Christmas and focus on what is truly important to me.  So, I’m saving my true self for the time with dear friends and family, for sitting with a cup of coffee early in the morning beside the Christmas tree and for the unstructured time during my week away from work between Christmas and New Year’s.

            I wish everyone a Joyous Yule.  May you have loved ones with whom to spend quality time and some un-busy time to reflect on 2011 and plan for 2012.