Plenty of mysteries are set during the holidays, since it’s easier to commit a crime when joyful distractions abound and opportunity is ripe, and for ironists the contrast between merriment and murder is irresistible. Two top mystery novelists have gone all in with these ideas this season, producing Christmas novellas that provide welcome escape for stress-shredded minds.
Janice Hallett made a big splash with her first novel, The Appeal, by updating the English-village cozy with a mischievous blend of satire and crime. She returns to that book’s village of Lockwood with The Christmas Appeal, where the beleaguered Fairway Players amateur theatrical group is about to stage its Christmas pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk. (This wacky British tradition, usually shortened to panto, is based on a fairy or folk tale, and involves singing, dancing, slapstick comedy, drag, and audience participation—a safe space for even the most buttoned-up Brit to unleash their inner Dame Edna.)
Kevin and Sarah-Jane MacDonald have ascended to leadership of the Players after Lockwood’s alpha family left in the wake of a charity-scam scandal. Reputation tarnished and finances depleted, the Players are limping along with shows such as An Evening with Gary Lineker, which featured a 67-year-old widow filling in for her son as the English soccer great.
To bounce back with their best panto ever, Sarah-Jane has procured a gigantic beanstalk that’s graced many a previous stage and is much the worse for wear. Sarah-Jane’s nemesis, Celia Halliday—who conceived a Lockwood-set version of Glengarry Glen Ross without the swearing—wants it gone, and is sowing seeds of anti-beanstalk dissent among the Players. Add to that an undercover cop playing the Ugly Idiot and a misunderstood order of “sweets” for the children, and Jack and the Beanstalk is headed for trouble.
The Christmas Appeal is told mainly through e-mails, text messages, and newspaper clippings. Humor takes center stage here, and the crimes fit the anything-goes spirit of the panto. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by seasonal buzz, slip this into your pocket, flee to a quiet room, and have a laugh with the Fairway Players.
In Janice Hallett’s The Christmas Appeal, the beleaguered Fairway Players amateur theatrical group is about to stage its Christmas pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk.
Peter Swanson (Eight Perfect Murders) has something darker in mind with The Christmas Guest, an expertly wielded icicle to the heart that packs a lot of menace into its 93 pages. Once again we’re in an English village, or, more specifically, a Cotswolds pile called Starvewood Hall. That ominous name might convey a warning to anyone but a starry-eyed 19-year-old California girl, but it’s the tail end of 1989 and Ashley Smith is studying in London with nowhere to go for the holidays. So when her posh classmate Emma Chapman invites her to Starvewood, she’s psyched to say yes. A little surprised, since she thought Emma didn’t like her much, but whatever.
The Hall is an Anglophile’s Christmas fantasy come true, decked with pine boughs and bursting with friends and relatives, but Emma’s parents are rude snobs, the house is freezing, and Ashley discovers that Emma’s gorgeous twin brother, Adam, is a person of interest to the police in the murder of a local girl, who, it turns out, looked a lot like her.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t deter her from getting swept up in the romance of the situation and developing an instant crush on him. “I am living in a GOTHIC THRILLER after all,” she writes in her diary, a chronicle that would melt the Scrooge-iest heart. Swanson’s ability to capture the voice of a hopeful, adventurous young woman so naïvely open to life’s possibilities comes as a nice surprise from this adroit creator of chilly sociopaths (though there’s one of those as well).
The book ends 30 years after Ashley’s fateful visit to Starvewood with the appearance of a ghost of Christmas past. Dickens excepted, spirit manifestations can be tricky to pull off, but this one chimes all the right notes of regret, wit, and poignancy. The Christmas Guest isn’t just good for a novella; it might become a dark little yuletide classic.
Peter Swanson has something dark in mind with The Christmas Guest, an expertly wielded icicle to the heart.
The small English village and Christmas are linked like a chain of cranberry and popcorn in the mystery-lover’s mind, so it’s not surprising that ITV’s beloved Midsomer Murders turned out a few Christmas-themed episodes over its two dozen seasons, the latest of which premiered on Acorn just a few weeks ago. The volatile family gatherings, the heirloom decorations, “In the Bleak Midwinter” on repeat, the Christmas cracker and paper crown—the whole scene begs to be disrupted by a murder or two.
And for that you can depend on Midsomer Murders. With its mix of playful and blackish humor, arcane plotlines, absurd village names, and imaginative murders, it’s the perfect show for those who prefer a little mayhem with their mistletoe.
One of the go-to scenarios of Midsomer Murders involves dysfunctional aristocratic families behaving badly in decrepit manor houses they can’t afford to heat. A splendid example of this is “Ghosts of Christmas Past,” from Season Seven. When not puzzling over whether Aunt Lydia Villiers fell down the stairs or was pushed and how that’s connected to the family’s toxic past, D.C.I. Tom Barnaby, sublimely underplayed by John Nettles, tolerates a rare visit from his irritating in-laws. This involves a dreaded game of Monopoly and the rare vision of Barnaby in earrings.
Watching Barnaby tolerate a whole universe of things is one of the show’s pleasures, but he’s no pushover. In “Days of Misrule,” another Christmas episode, the old-school detective is ordered by a gung-ho young superintendent to get on board with team-building exercises and data-driven policing. As Barnaby casually drops a sheaf of paperwork into the trash, we know that’s never going to happen.
The small English village and Christmas are linked like a chain of cranberry and popcorn in the mystery-lover’s mind, so it’s not surprising that Midsomer Murders turned out a few Christmas-themed episodes.
Neil Dudgeon, as Nettles’s replacement John Barnaby in later seasons, isn’t as skilled or watchable, but his potato face and slightly superior manner grow on you. His very special episode, “A Christmas Haunting,” features another once wealthy family, three people who spend their days loathing one another in a large, cheerless house. The daughter’s boredom leads her to guide paranormal “ghost walks,” which end in a couple of grisly deaths by sword. Somehow all the dangerous police work falls to John’s new partner, who is first traumatized by it but then rewarded with Christmas dinner at the Barnabys’. In 10 minutes we’re wrenched from horror to Hallmark; that darkness-to-light whiplash is quintessential Midsomer Murders.
By the way, that final new episode of Season 24 drops down the chimney on Christmas Day. What better gift for the insatiable Midsomer fan?
Lisa Henricksson reviews mystery books for AIR MAIL. She lives in New York City