Book Reviews – Page 97 – Carol's Notebook

‘Twas the Knife Before Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

December 14, 2018December 14, 2018 by Carol6 Comments

'Twas the Knife Before Christmas is a perfect cozy mystery for this time of year. It's Christmassy from beginning (the corpse being found in a candy dish of peppermints) to end (a Christmas Eve party at an inn that may or may not have been built by Santa Claus). Holly is our amateur sleuth. She works at her parents' tree farm where the annual Reindeer Games is underway. She's also the future innkeeper. Her parents are building an inn at the farm to help accommodate all the tourists that come to Mistletoe, Maine. Her friend Caroline is accused of murder, actually arrested, so she takes it upon herself to do some investigating, not trusting her maybe-boyfriend/sheriff to handle the job on his own. In her defense though, Evan, the sheriff, clearly has something else on his mind. It turns out his sister is in some trouble and is hiding out at his house. There were a lot of people in town who...

Not a Creature Was Purring by Krista Davis

December 12, 2018December 14, 2018 by Carol10 Comments

This was my first visit to Wagtail, Virginia, but it is an awesome place, a perfect vacation spot to take your pets. My Secret Santa gave me Not a Creature Was Purring last year, but it took me until this December to get around to reading it. Wagtail is a perfect little pet-friendly tourist town. All the stores welcome cats and dogs, as does the inn. Dogs get to go sled-riding and pets can go to the nicest restaurant in town with their people. It really is a pet-centric town, my dog would love it. Holly Maple and her grandmother run the Sugar Maple Inn (and her grandmother is mayor of Wagtail). This year the inn is booked solid for Christmas - the only problem is that it's mostly the family of Holly's best friend/love interest's fiancee. Holly wants to be nice, but fiancee is a pretty terrible person. Thankfully, because clearly Holmes and Holly belong together. But of course, since this...

Secret Santa by Matthew Costello and Neil Richards

December 11, 2018December 10, 2018 by Carol4 Comments

I had to go to a Christmas luncheon out of town for work and was trying to pick something to start listening to for my ride back home. (Lunch, by the way was at The Twisted Olive in Green, OH - delicious!) Around town I've been listening to holiday music, but on trips over say 15 minutes when I'm by myself, I prefer listening to books. I always enjoy the Cherringham novellas, and Secret Santa has been on my to-read list since last Christmas. Santa is missing. Bill Vokes always plays Santa, but this year, after donning his costume, he steps outside for a cigarette and just disappears. Sarah's dad is worried, so she and Jack start looking around. Sarah and Jack make a formidable team. He's former NYPD and she's smart, curious, and good on a computer. And there are a lot of deaths/crimes in Cherringham for them to solve. For a small town in the Cotswalds, it's a dangerous place,...

Murder on a Winter Afternoon by Betty Rowlands

December 9, 2018December 5, 2018 by Carol6 Comments

Keeping with my wintery reading theme, next up is Murder on a Winter Afternoon by Betty Rowlands. It's also a Christmas read, kind of, since it takes place at that time of the year and two of the characters do help with the script and scenery for a Christmas show, even if it's only mentioned once or twice. This is the 5th (or 7th depending on how you count) in the series starring Melissa Craig, but the first I've read and I though it worked quite well on its own. Melissa is an author and she's been asked to finish the last novel of her neighbor, Leonora Jewell. Leonora usually wrote family dramas, but this last one is more of a crime novel, right up Melissa's ally. Leonora was killed, presumably by the burglars who had been making the rounds and not by the sex strangler who is making women in the area extra cautious. Of course it turns out to be...

Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith

December 7, 2018December 4, 2018 by Carol3 Comments

Adrian Gray and his six adult children, along with a few spouses, are gathered at his country home for Christmas. I want to say "to celebrate Christmas," but I don't think they were ever really going to celebrate. They are not a nice group of people. Adrian is not a nice man himself. Then we have Richard, a politician who desperately wants a title, and his wife who may in face hate him. Olivia is married to Eustace (cue the anti-Semitism of the 1930s), a shady financier, his whole reputation is on the line if he doesn't manage to raise a substantial sum of money urgently. Brand ran off when he was young to be an artist, but is he's now working as a low-paid clerk and wants money so he can take off back to Paris to try to revive his career as a painter. His wife isn't at the house party, but she is a crass woman whose children are...

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

December 6, 2018November 14, 2018 by Carol10 Comments

I was looking for one last non-fiction book for the year to make it an even 12—a lot for me, and I've been in the mood for Christmas reading, if you haven't noticed from my last few posts. Which led me to The Man Who Invented Christmas. No, Charles Dickens didn't invent Christmas, but he did help re-popularize it and shape it as a holiday about family and charity and giving. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol at a point where he was almost flat-broke. He self-published the book, supervising everything from the illustrations to the printing. The story provides a lot of information about how books were published and marketed during the Victorian Era, along with how many were pirated and resold under various guises or made into plays without the author/publisher's consent. While A Christmas Carol didn't make him the money he had hoped, it did become a perennial favorite. It helped shape how we celebrate Christmas and the values we think...