Death Comes at Christmas

Christmas has many traditions from trees to strange men sneaking down the chimney in the dead of night. One tradition I like is the different genres that tackle the season. There is something spooky about the dark nights and folk traditions that make Christmas Ghost Stories so good, but it is also an ideal season for murder. Families and colleagues gather, perhaps for the only time of the year. Food is consumed, alcohol drunk, old truths revealed, rivalries and hatreds reopened. Editors Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane are all too happy to remind you in their collection of short stories that Death Comes at Christmas. 

Any fan of the crime genre will know that it is host to many subgenres. Christmas evokes the idea of a more homely form of comfortable crime caper than it does Nordic noir, but the editors have done an excellent job gathering distinctive styles of story, perhaps leaning into the cozy more than any other genre. 

As a collection, the standard is impressively high, especially when you realize most tales are new. No selecting from decades of Chrimbo crime, these are stories written for the collection. For me, the best stories in the collection are designed and written as contained short stories. Small Christmas amuse bouches to hold in your mind and enjoy. The first tale, How to Commit Murder in a Bookshop by C L Taylor, is an immediate hit straight out of the gate. A funny, slightly evil tale about a group of booksellers and publishers who may have forgotten their love of the written form. 

Other stories that are compact, lovely nuggets of short story goodness include Last Christmas, A Deadly Gift, and Marley’s Ghost. Ghost by Sarah Hilary is particularly entertaining as a well-designed short story with eccentric characters and a nice twist or two to please the reader. 

Crime and horror make a good mix and there are several stories that provoke tension and thrills, with a nice shock included. Red Angel, Naughty List and Frostbite prove that not all crimes in winter are cozy. If you are looking for a lighter more caperish story then The Wrong Party is a pleasant pallet cleanser that allows you to catch your breath, a story about a temp worker who walks into the wrong office do and is mistaken for someone quite different. 

A couple of historic tales also shone. Christmas Yet to Come by Helen Fields is an interesting sequel to A Christmas Carol which takes some of the side characters from the original and extrapolates what may have happened to them decades later. O Murder Night by J T Ellison is an excellent example of using a historic setting and a creepy setting to make a great crime thriller story. 

The majority of the stories contained within the pages of Death are a triumph, the only ones that fell a little flat are those that feel like they are side adventures from characters in a longer series. They read like half formed ideas that the authors had and did not have enough material to flesh out into a full novel. Popular and recurring characters can work well in short stories, just ask Sherlock, but in the case of this book they felt half baked when compared to other stories. 

One tale that I must highlight for the wrong reasons, not only for falling into the above trap, but for also for indulging in one of my least favourite aspects of poorly written crime fiction is the unfortunate The Midnight Murder Mass. Not only does it use characters from elsewhere that are not fleshed out here, but it also has a lazy attitude to the central horrors in the story. An event in the tale is truly horrific. The type of thing that would change the face of the UK. A crime that would terrify and be spoken of for decades after, however, the author and characters shake it off like another run of the mill murder. One of the reasons that I no longer read as much crime fiction as I once did is the cavalier attitude that some authors have to their victims or to the crime. There is given suspension of disbelief in the genre and murder is never good, but a mass execution of over 100 innocents deserves more than a short story and a deeper tale. A very disappointing story. 

In the whole, this is an excellent collection. O’Regan and Kane have contacted an assortment of diverse authors whose styles bring a lot to the world of Christmas Crime. It is a book that feels perfect to read on or around the season. If one story leaves you feeling a little down, there will be another excellent one just a few pages away.