Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop

September 2, 2024
Penzler, the owner of New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop, compiles 13 of the holiday stories commissioned annually by his store into an appealing, if minor, collection. Each tale is set near Christmas, involves some sort of criminal suspicion, and takes place partly in the bookstore itself. Highlights include Jeffrey Deaver’s “The Christmas Party,” about a man in a retirement home who conspires with his caretaker to foil a plot by his conniving relatives, and Ragnar Jónasson’s ingenious “A Christmas Puzzle,” which follows a woman who lays a trap to reclaim her husband’s books from a thieving clerk at the Mysterious Bookshop. Other entries offer wintry twists on well-worn genre tropes, including “Hester’s Gift,” a Strangers on a Train riff from Tom Mead that follows two writers who meet at a mystery convention and plan a double murder, and “Here We Come A-Wassailing,” a cheeky “Gift of the Magi” update from Thomas Perry. Each tale’s brevity makes it easy to dip into and out of the collection, and the mix of big names (Laura Lippman and Loren D. Estelman also contribute) with lesser-knowns offers a spirited survey of contemporary crime fiction. For mystery fans, this is a satisfying-enough holiday treat.

September 1, 2024

Penzler (editor of Golden Age Detective Stories) opened the doors of his famous Mysterious Bookstore on a Friday the 13th in April 1979, behind New York City's Carnegie Hall. It's still around 45 years later, now relocated to Lower Manhattan. In the 1990s, he began commissioning a different writer every year to write a Christmas mystery, some of whose action would take place in the bookshop. Penzler published the stories as booklets that he gave to customers as a present. In this collection, the second gathering of these Christmas season tales, Loren D. Estleman offers up a hilarious Nero Wolfe parody, Jeffery Deaver gleefully details the turning of tables on relatives plotting to dispose of their ailing uncle, and Thomas Perry traces the path of an exorbitantly expensive bottle of cognac whose successive owners sample it, then top it up with something else, reseal it, and pass it on to a new owner. In his lighthearted introduction, Penzler cautions that, although a character with his name appears in some of the stories, any resemblance is pure fiction. VERDICT None of the 13 stories in this collection disappoints; several are superior.--David Keymer

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2024
A collection of 13 stories commissioned separately over the years as Christmas gifts to patrons of the world's oldest extant mystery bookstore. The stories range "from humorous to suspenseful to heartwarming," editor/proprietor Penzler notes in his introduction, but they all take place at Christmas, are set at least in part at his Mysterious Bookshop, and involve a mystery. Some are actual crime stories, such as "The Gift of King Herod" by Brendan DuBois, Rob Hart's "The Gift of the Wiseguy," "The Christmas Party" by Jeffery Deaver, Tom Mead's "Hester's Gift," and Ragnar J�nasson's "A Christmas Puzzle." Some have just a whiff of crime: Loren D. Estleman's "Wolfe Trap" and David Gordon's "Sergeant Santa," for example. And some, such as Jason Starr's "Black Christmas" and Lyndsay Faye's "A Midnight Clear," feature no real crimes, just bad choices. Mystery writers themselves take center stage in "Secret Santa" by Ace Atkins, Thomas Perry's "Here We Come A-Wassailing," and "End Game" by Martin Edwards. Laura Lippman's "Snowflake Time" deserves special notice for its prescience. First published in 2017, it's the tale of a loudmouthed journalist whose air of sweet reasonableness masks his small-minded, misogynistic views and his special animus toward single women who love cats. He gets his. Crime-rich or crime-free, the stories are all refreshingly good-natured and, in the spirit of the season, lean toward peace on earth and good will to most. A must for every mystery lover's wish list.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.