A lot of readers clamor for “old-school” mysteries, the kind an Agatha Christie or even a Mary Roberts Rinehart might have written back in the day. Well, you can’t get any more old-school than C.S. Challinor’s CHRISTMAS IS MURDER, an AND THEN THERE WERE NONE-style tale set in a gorgeous Victorian hotel with a series of colorful, eccentric characters all insulated by a tremendous snowstorm.
There are pros and cons to this approach. The pros include the fact that readers understand the conventions, and get their joys out of carefully reading the text to find the disconcerting phrases that lead them to unmask the identity of the culprit. The cons include the fact that we’ve seen this all before, and it becomes increasingly difficult to make the plot realistic in our übertechno society.
Scots barrister Rex Graves is invited to spend Christmas holiday at Swanmere Manor, owned by a friend of his mother’s. Having been a widower for four years, and with his current flame visiting Iraq for charitable work, he decides to accept the invitation. And then the murders start.
This is all good, quick-paced fun, and the characters have enough rough edges and odd indiscretions to make them interesting to the casual reader. But it’s a little unsatisfying in that Graves himself doesn’t seem to be much of a character to base the series around (having a Scottish burr alone isn’t quite enough), the detection isn’t as crisp as one would like, and the realism level is so low, one keeps expecting a gigantic twist to occur that never does. There’s also a fairly ridiculous political subplot thrown in to boot.
Is that bad? Not really. It’s not a stellar effort, but for a debut novel — and one that devotes 15 percent of royalty proceeds to organizations that rehabilitate U.S. veterans wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq (bravo!) — it’s entertaining enough to warrant a second look, and a hopeful glance at Challinor’s soon-to-be-released MURDER IN THE RAW. Sometimes, the old school is just as educational as the new school. —Mark Rose
Related posts:
- 6 Holiday Anthologies to Get You in the Christmas Spirit
- Murder in Vegas: New Crime Tales of Gambling and Desperation
- Murder at Heartbreak Hospital
- The War of the Worlds Murder
- Murder in the Rough
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Mark,
Enjoyed your review and insights. I do love the old-style mystery and think it is a great escape from today’s modern thriller, murder mystery with a protagonist suffering all kinds of angst. Will make a point to look this up.
Pat Harrington
(Yes, I have a sleuth who seeks bliss and on the way to it, stumbles over dead bodies. So, she has some angst–but not horribly so. And my older sleuths are past that “nonesense” and ready to pinch your ear, if you behave in an unmannerly or untoward way.)
Thoughtful and well-constructed review.
“The cozy is not a roller coaster ride as much as it is an examination of human frailty. Instead of unexpected plot twists, cozies are known for surprising revelations.”
From “Writing the Cozy Mystery” by Stephen D. Rogers at: http://www.writing-world.com/mystery/cozy.shtml