Murder for Christmas: Discover the perfect classic mystery for Christmas (Mordecai Tremaine Mystery)

by Francis Duncan

Mulled wine, mince pies...and murder.

Mordecai Tremaine, former tobacconist and perennial lover of romance novels, has been invited to spend Christmas in the sleepy village of Sherbroome at the country retreat of one Benedict Grame.

Arriving on Christmas Eve, he finds that the revelries are in full flow - but so too are tensions amongst the assortment of guests.

Midnight strikes and the party-goers discover that it's not just presents nestling under the tree...there's a dead body too. A dead body that bears a striking resemblance to Father Christmas.

With the snow falling and the suspicions flying, it's up to Mordecai to sniff out the culprit - and prevent someone else from getting murder for Christmas.

'The book nods towards Agatha Christie but retains a crackling atmosphere of dread and horror that will chill the heart however warm your fireside' Metro

• ISBN10: 1784703451
• ISBN13: 9781784703455
• Publish Date: 12 November 2015
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 12 July 2024
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Vintage
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

NO one could have foretold how it was going to end.
Not even the murderer.

Well, that's not quite true... I had the murderer picked out @41% and even had a hunch about the motive ... because the setup of this story reminded me of a Graham Greene story.

The downside of all this was that the following 59% of the book were pure tedium.

It is a shame because the Preview of the book, where we get a snap shot of the discovery of the victim before the story has even been set up, made for fun reading. Unfortunately, the actual story was riddled with excruciatingly over-written internal monologue, and no reference to Dickensian characters or attempts at a Poirot-like MC could make up for it.

[annieb123]

Original review on my blog: here.

Originally published in 1949, this is a classic golden age English country house murder. All the boxes are checked off: country house (✓), isolated by nature/weather/etc (✓), eccentric group of characters gathered together (✓), add one amateur sleuth to the mix, then add murder and stir well (✓). This reissue is being released in October by Sourcebooks and was originally written by Francis Duncan, aka William Underhill. There was also a mystery about the original author of the book itself, which is detailed here.

I enjoyed the slightly innocuous sleuth, Mordecai Tremaine, he has a romantic gentle soul. Others have called him a male Miss Marple, but I would say Miss Marple is a lot more savvy and realistic. Miss Marple only appears fuzzy and harmless (remember she's called Nemesis several times). Tremaine really IS a sweetly romantic soul with a secret addiction to romance pulp magazines! :)

The plotting and development are competently delivered and the dialogue and description are very readable (and not very dated), but the secondary characters themselves were, for me, very difficult to keep straight. I had to keep going back and searching (bless you Kindle search feature!) to find out who was who. That was a relatively minor irritation, honestly, because the central characters were easy enough to sort out.

Veteran armchair sleuths will likely figure the solution out before the end of the book, but there were motives aplenty and some surprises and twists which I hadn't worked out before the denouement.

Golden age mysteries (especially locked room, and/or country house mysteries) are a special favorite of mine and this one is solid. I will absolutely be checking out any future offerings from this publisher and author, who apparently wrote at least 20 books, several of which feature amateur sleuth Tremaine.

Well written, solid and comfortable. Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher