More Favorite Cozy Mysteries with a Christmas Theme for 2023
Raise your hand if you think the best Christmas gift is a book (or books).
Yeah, me too.
I have some favorite Christmas-themed mysteries, of course. I shared some of them last year, and you’ll find them here. Last year’s list includes:
Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod
The Twelve Clues of Christmas by Rhys Bowen
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie (previously titled A Holiday for Murder)
Starring Miss Seeton by Hamilton Crane
I’d like to add another to the list: Murder at an Irish Christmas by Carleen O’Connor. This is the sixth in O’Connor’s Irish Village series, featuring Siobhan O’Sullivan and her family. This December, they’re off to spend Christmas with the family of brother James’ fiancee, Elise. The holiday will have a musical theme, because Elise’s grandfather is the celebrated conductor, Enda Elliott.
However, the festivities are put on hold when Enda Elliott is found crushed to death by a harp. Even though Siobhan isn’t on duty at the Garda, she jumps in to solve the crime quickly before the wrong family member is accused of murder.
Or how about Red Christmas by Reginald Hill? He’s best known for his Dalziel and Pascoe mysteries, which were made into a BBC television series, and he’s a skilled writer.
Red Christmas harks back to Charles Dickens. Dingley Dell is a secluded English inn, and the host, a Dickens scholar, promises a truly Dickensian Christmas. But the Dickensian Christmases that Arabella Allen knows about don’t include a blizzard that traps everyone inside, and murder.
Do you have a favorite Christmas-themed mystery? Let me know in the comments below.
This will be the final newsletter for 2023, so you’ll have more time to read mysteries over the holidays. I’ll see you in the New Year!
What I’m Reading
Booked for Murder
Well, besides rereading some of my favorite Christmas mysteries, I’ve found a fun new series by Jasmine Webb. Booked for Murder is the first in the series. The protagonist is Poppy Perkins, a tired server in a San Francisco donut shop and aspiring author.
Poppy’s at the counter one day when a really rude man gives her a hard time, demanding a sugar-free donut when the shop doesn’t even offer them. Poppy snaps, tells him in no uncertain terms that’s not how it works, she can’t just conjure a sugar-free donut out of thin air, and he can choose a donut that’s in the display case or take his business elsewhere.
With a few angry words, he chooses a donut and a cup of coffee — without sugar, because Poppy checks! — and stomps over to a table. The shop owner fires Poppy on the spot, and rushes over to apologize to the creep, who turns out to be one of the wealthiest and most influential men in San Francisco.
Which would all have been fine if he hadn’t keeled over dead a few minutes later.
The tone is light, Poppy’s a fun character, and it fits well within the cozy mystery genre. However, I gave it only a three-star review on Goodreads because of passages like this:
The building was three stories tall, rectangular, and made of red brick, with a dark-green façade on the ground floor and on the cornice and frieze high above. I wasn’t sure exactly when it was built, but it heralded back to the age of the gold rush.
- Booked for Murder by Jasmine Webb
Words matter, and I’m a self-confessed word nerd. And you just can’t herald back to something. According to Merriam-Webster, the verb “to herald” means “to give notice of: announce,” “to greet, especially with enthusiasm: hail,” or “to signal the approach of: foreshadow.” I think the author meant the building’s architecture harkened back.
If you can overlook those kinds of gaffes, you’ll enjoy the book.
The Mistress of Bhatia House
I’ve been a Sujata Massey fan since the first book of her Rei Shimura series so I was delighted to meet Perveen Mistry in The Widows of Malabar Hill, the first book in the Perveen Mistry series.
In this, the fourth book of the series, Perveen is still Bombay’s only female solicitor, and works with her father in his law firm. As an Indian woman she’s doubly constrained, first by the laws and customs that limit a woman’s role in society and in the courtroom, and, second, by the laws and customs that made Indians subservient to the British at the time.
Women’s rights are the fulcrum around which the events of The Mistress of Bhatia House revolve, and Perveen’s problem seems insolulable. Fortunately, she and her father, along the British object of her romantic desire, are able to unravel the tangled threads of violent crime, fraudulent land deals, and other sorded crimes and prevail against powerful enemies.
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Notable Quotes
I slipped the card to the bottom of the pile. Mark knew about my ex, I just didn’t want to deal with it right now. Hunting down a killer and a poisoner was much more interesting, and a darned sight less stressful.
- Mulled Wine and Murder by Kate P Adams
I just love it when hunting down a poisoner is less stressful than telling a friend your ex has popped up again, don’t you?
I was about to throw my Fitbit exercise tracker in the trash, then take the trash to the driveway so I could back over it with the car a few times before setting it on fire. I’d been walking three miles a day and dieting faithfully for almost a month now and hadn’t lost a single pound.
- Theater Nights are Murder by Libby Klein
How do I relate to this? Let me count the ways. . . I love the economy of language here, expressing Poppy’s (a different Poppy, this one is Poppy McAllister) frustration.