Book Review: Murder On Christmas Eve

Happy Monday bookish people! Today is a very busy and exciting day for me, I am going with my sister to see her try on wedding dresses. But before that I am here to share a book review or two, starting with Murder on Christmas Eve – an anthology of short stories all set on Christmas Eve.

In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little about each one. I will try to keep it as spoiler free as possible. I hope you enjoy my book review.

Murder on Christmas Eve Plot:

I will start by saying I don’t think there was a story in this anthology that I didn’t enjoy. My favourite of them being the one about the cat, The book isn’t near me now so I can’t check the title but if you read the book then you’ll know exactly which one I mean. There isn’t much more I can say about the plot except to reiterate how much I really enjoyed it.

Murder on Christmas Eve Characters:

This category is also hard to describe because there are so many characters throughout the stories but there is a wide range, old, young, tall, short, the villains aren’t always who you expect it to be and I loved that.

Murder on Christmas Eve Writing and Dialogue:

Each of the stories are written by different authors, some of which I had read before and others that I hadn’t. It was nice to read some work by new authors and start to enjoy their texts.

Murder on Christmas Eve:

I gave this book four stars overall because it kept me very entertained while on a car journey. Each of the stories are very intriguing and contain great mmysteries.

Blurb:

Christmas Eve. While the world sleeps, snow falls gently from the sky, presents await under the tree … and murder is afoot. In this collection of ten classic murder mysteries from the best crime writers in history, death and mayhem take many festive forms, from the inventive to the unexpected.

From a Santa Claus with a grudge to a cat who knows who killed its owner on Christmas Eve, these are stories to enjoy – and be mystified by – in front of a roaring fire, mince pie to hand.

The trinity cat / Ellis Peters —
The Santa Claus Club / Julian Symons —
The four seasons / Michael Innes —
No sanity clause / Ian Rankin —
The footprint in the sky / John Dickson Carr —
A wife in a million / Val McDermid —
The dagger with wings / G.K. Chesterton —
Cambric tea / Marjorie Bowen —
As dark as Christmas gets / Lawrence Block —
On Christmas day in the morning / Margery Allingham