The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

December 9, 2013
Penzler mines the rich vein of American and British Christmas stories from the 19th to the 21st centuries for this impressive collection of 59 short stories featuring authors still in their prime as well as others mostly forgotten by today's readers. In mood the stories range from happy endings as in Colin Dexter's Morse's Greatest Mystery to vastly amusing like Donald Westlake's The Burglar and the Whatsit. Max Allan Collins's A Wreath for Christmas plays nicely off of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. A few authors merit two entries. Agatha Christie stories bookend the collection with Poirot and Miss Marple sharing honors. Ellis Peters, Peter Lovesey and Gabrielle Long under both her Marjorie Bowen and Joseph Shearing pseudonyms also get double billing. Some of the older choices show their age as does Ellery Queen's florid The Adventure of the Dauphin's Doll and Robert Louis Stevenson's turgid Markheim. Overall Penzler has succeeded in gathering a representative and entertaining selection of yuletide stories that mystery fans might like to see on Christmas morn.

October 15, 2013

This anthology lives up to its name, featuring nearly 60 Christmas mystery stories from a variety of well-known authors such as Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Sara Paretsky, Mary Higgins Clark, Ellis Peters, and Arthur Conan Doyle. The wide-ranging stories (many difficult to find anywhere else) were published between 1877 and 2011 and are arranged by category, from "classic" to "uncanny." There's something for everyone in another great collection from two-time Edgar Award-winning editor (The Big Book of Pulps) and mystery bookstore owner Penzler. VERDICT Mystery readers will not be able to resist the "festive felonies, deadly puddings" or "misdemeanors under the mistletoe."

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.