Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop

By: Otto Penzler - editor

Narrated by: Jennifer Pickens, Graham Rowat

The oldest mystery specialty bookstore in the world, The Mysterious Bookshop, has for most of its forty-five-year history commissioned an original short story as a holiday gift for its customers. Written exclusively for the store, the stories were given as a holiday gift to its customers as a thank you for their business, handed out or mailed between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

The prompt for the story requires three elements: that it be set at Christmastime, that it involve a crime of some kind, or the suspicion of one, and that it be set at least partially in the bookstore. And from these loose structural guidelines, diverse tales took flight. The twelve tales included in this volume are among the finest to be produced in this annual tradition.

Included herein are the ingenious "Snowflake Time" by Laura Lippman; Lyndsay Faye's tale of vengeance "A Midnight Clear"; the challenging brainteaser, "A Christmas Puzzle," by Ragnar Jonasson; "Hester's Gift," an impossible crime story by Tom Mead; the suspenseful "The Christmas Party" by Jeffery Deaver; Thomas Perry's hilarious comedy of errors, "Here We Come A-Wassailing;" and other tales appropriate for the season, collected and introduced by Otto Penzler. The result is, objectively speaking, the finest "stocking stuffer" that a mystery fan could hope to find.

©2024 The Mysterious Press (compilation); copyright 2024 by Otto Penzler (introduction) (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Plots good but narration needs work

Enjoyed the stories but the monotonous, single narrator (with the exception of 2 by a woman) made the plots rather run together
In my opinion, a variety of narrators would greatly improve this book

Very Good

All the different authors! Each story is different and yet connected. I loved it! Very nice.