Christmas at The Mysterious Bookshop

by Perseus

[MurderByDeath]

This was my final holiday read for Christmas this year and it was excellent!    Otto Penzler, the owner of The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC, each year commissions a short mystery from a well-known author, to be published in a small pamphlet and given to customers at the holiday season as a way to say Thank You.  The only stipulations Penzler gives to the author is that the story take place at Christmas and have at least one scene take place at The Mysterious Bookshop.     This book is a collection of 17 of those stories and only one of them failed to thrill me or at least amuse me.  (That one wasn't bad, it was just a creepy story in homage to Poe.)  My absolute favourite was Lawrence Block's As Dark As Christmas Gets.  A very close second was Jeremiah Healy's The Holiday Fairy and for sheer cleverness that had my giggling as I read was S.J. Rozan's The Grift of the Magi.   If you enjoy holiday stories and mysteries, definitely keep an eye out for this one.  I'll re-read more than a few of these stories again and again.