The special CiB meme ‘Xmas scenes from books, accompanied by carefully chosen pictures’ is back!
Every year I do a series of Xmas entries on the blog, helped and encouraged by suggestions and recommendations from my lovely readers. If you use Pinterest you can see some of the beautiful seasonal pictures on this page, and you can find (endless!) more Xmas books via the labels at the bottom of the page. You’d think I’d be running out of Xmas books and scenes by now, but far from it – I have to begin this feature earlier in December each year. More ideas still welcome in the comments. (If it’s a particularly good choice I will ditch one of the ones I have ready and give you credit…)
The Mistletoe Murder by PD James
short story collection published 2016stories from different dates
The Mistletoe Murder
[Christmas 1940 in England – a posh country house, but wartime restrictions are in place]
The evening was spent in desultory talk in the sitting room, dozing and reading. The supper was light, soup and herb omelettes – a welcome contrast to the heaviness of the goose and Christmas pudding – served very early, as was the custom, so that the Seddons could get away to spend the night with friends in the village. After dinner we moved again to the ground-floor sitting room. Rowland out on the gramophone, then suddenly seized my hands and said ‘Let’s dance.’ The gramophone was the kind that automatically played a series of records and as one popular disc dropped after another – ‘Jeepers Creepers’, ‘Beer Barrel Polka’, ‘Tiger Rag’, ‘Deep Purple’ – we waltzed, tangoed, fox-trotted, quick-stepped round the sitting room and out into the hall. Rowland was a superb dancer.
commentary: Faber & Faber seemed to be after a quick buck for this one: PD James died a few years ago, but is still very popular, and this neat little hardback, priced at £10, must have appeared in a number of stockings last year – the perfect present for a crime fiction fan. It has a very nice, Ravilious-like, cover:
on the left, new p/back cover on the right.
Generally an attractive presentation. Pity they didn’t pay quite so much attention to the contents: one of the stories is wrongly-titled in the copyright page, for goodness sake.
To describe the stories as uncollected seems not quite right (I have one of them in a much older book that I can see from where I write), and one of the stories has absolutely no Christmas connection at all - scraping the barrel? Another, The Twelve Clues of Christmas, is very seasonal, but really just unbelievable and silly. The Boxdale Inheritance is the best story of the four, but has a very unsound moral framework.
And I am going to be even more Grinch-like and miserable: there is a massive plothole in one of the stories. Fortunately I can explain this without spoilers. The narrator, a young widow, has gone to a family house for Christmas, and someone is murdered while she is there. She tells us everything she sees and hears. One vital clue is a small puddle of water on the floor.
But with the ultimate explanation of events, the true one, the puddle of water wouldn’t have been there when she saw it. In order to check this, I read the damn story twice (and it really wasn’t that good) and I am quite certain of this. Given it was a short story, with approximately 3 feeble clues and a very small cast of characters, I think that isn’t good enough.
However, fair play. I have combed through a lot of reviews of this book, and not one reader (including, apparently, the estimable Val McDermid who wrote an introduction to the book) seems to have noticed this.
So – it’s a Christmas-y looking book, new paperback edition out for this year. Buy it, give it, receive it. If you are a PD James fan, keep it for completist reasons? But don’t claim, or believe, that it contains classic detective stories… And of course don't confuse it with Mistletoe and Murder, the Carola Dunn seasonal crime book featured here on the blog last week.
The picture of the skeleton putting on a Father Christmas mask looks as though it belongs on the front of a seasonal murder mystery, but is actually from a Christian book reminding readers that while YOU are having a good time, other people are dying.
The couple dancing on a record are from the cover of a different crime story – the Dancing Detective by William Irish. Ggary please note – see our comments about dancing detectives underneath (naturally) this entry on The Last Tango of Dolores Delgado.
Hmmm......Don't think this one's for me, Moira, 'though as always, your post on it is excellent. I'd be grinch-y , too, about a plothole like that, for a start. It sounds as though this was put together more for the profit opportunity than because it's a high-quality collection. I may just skip this one...
ReplyDeleteI don't particularly like laying into books, as you know Margot, but I thought the publishers were being a bit cheeky with this one. Still, plenty of people liked it, and I'm sure many people gave it or received it as a present...
Deletehaha Grinch away! Thanks for taking the bullet with this one and being so dedicated to read one of the stories twice! (Now that's blogger commitment).
ReplyDeleteThanks Kate - I like to feel I keep up professional standards tee hee. Perhaps I should've gone into the sleuthing business rather than reading about it!
DeleteI did buy this at the book sale this year. By the time I read it I probably won't notice any plot holes. I am not very good at catching those anyway.
ReplyDeleteTake no notice of me! I sincerely hope you enjoy it. It IS a good festive book...perhaps to be read when you are sleepy and don't notice problems.
DeleteMoira: Wow! That is a worthy rant. I see you not as the Grinch but perhaps a touch of the Scrooge. A "Bah! Humbug!" would not have been out of place. I have not heard of any of these stories. Do you think the Baroness was not anxious to have them published?
ReplyDeleteI know the feeling of re-reading if I have something negative to say wanting to be sure it was as I remembered it.
I think as a lawyer you could have torn some of these stories to pieces if they'd come to court! I would expect you to be careful of your facts, to the extent of reading twice...
DeleteI suspect, as you suggest, that the stories were quick seasonal money-spinners, and she wasn't bothered about preserving them.
I always think that there is a reason why some stories remain uncollected! I remember finding a copy of this in the local library before Xmas last year, and decided to dip in and see whether I wanted to invest in a hardback copy. I didn't finish the book and I didn't buy a copy, either. An absolutely blatant piece of cash-in by the publishers, who were obviously annoyed that she had gone and died on them. It was especially annoying as I had just finished a really good collection called EXEUNT MURDERERS by Anthony Boucher, which had gathered up some wonderful short stories by one of the greats of American crime fiction. Like you say, it's a lovely looking book, but ultimately it's all sizzle and no steak.
ReplyDeleteJames was one of those people whom I admired and respected, but I couldn't bring myself to read her later fiction. Her later books are the sort that respectable critics are happy to review because they are serious stories about serious people having serious problems in a seriously serious setting with none of that rubbish about being startled or surprised or entertained.
ggary
Yes exactly, agree totally both about this book, and about the James oeuvre in general. She got worse and worse and longer and longer. And I found Adam Dalgleish about the most irritating policeman of them all, amid some competition. James took herself too seriously, and the publishers I suppose never felt the need to edit her...
DeleteNot sure if I would like this, but I do like the idea of dancing detectives - and I've enjoyed reading about Dolores Delgado, and am now following links from her to other posts - I do love setting off on a detour and not knowing where it will lead!
ReplyDeleteOh thank you, there couldn't be a nicer description of you moving around the blog, so very much how I would like a reader to respond!
Delete