The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries

Big Book Series

By: Otto Penzler

Narrated by: Cat Gould, Matthew Lloyd Davies

Length: 32 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's Summary

Have yourself a crooked little Christmas with The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. 

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler collects more than 50 of his all-time favorite holiday crime stories - many of which are difficult or nearly impossible to find anywhere else. From classic Victorian tales by Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Thomas Hardy, to contemporary stories by Sara Paretsky and Ed McBain, this collection touches on all aspects of the holiday season, and all types of mysteries. They are suspenseful, funny, frightening, and poignant. 

Included are puzzles by Mary Higgins Clark and Isaac Asimov; uncanny tales in the tradition of A Christmas Carol by Peter Lovesey and Max Allan Collins; O. Henry-like stories by Stanley Ellin and Joseph Shearing; comic gems from Donald E. Westlake and John Mortimer; and many, many more. Almost any kind of mystery you're in the mood for-suspense, pure detection, humor, cozy, private eye, or police procedural - can be found in this book.

©2013 Otto Penzler (introduction and compilation) (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Not unabridged missing several stories

There are a handful of stories from this book not included on this audio production. The carol singers by Josephine bell (which is the story I was looking forward to hearing the most) is nowhere to be found. Even though it’s mentioned in the intro by penzler. Also the Agatha Christie story the Christmas pudding the very first story in the book is also nowhere to be found. As I went through the titles and tracks I found 3-4 other stories like the Santa Claus club is in the book not on here. What a shame. I was very excited for this release.

Female Narrator Needs Breathing Lessons

I would have gladly given this book a full 5 star rating but for the female narrator s issue with the cadence of her breathing... it is most bizarre..
She stops in the middle of a word pushing out her breath,.. only to hurry along pell mell running the ending sentence into the start of the next one.
It was most disturbing,.. and I can’t fathom why no one caught the issue.

Boring!

When I read a Christmas novel, I want it to hold my interest. None of this collection did that for me.

All my favs!

all my faves. made me want to go back and read the authors again. Interesting!

As good as I wished for, for a change!

Interesting and varied collection from some of the best authors past and present. Far better than most short story collections on Audible.

Disappointing

I thought that this could be a good listen in the run up to Christmas, but I was mistaken. The connection with Christmas is tenuous, to say the least, in a lot of the stories. The introduction explains that many of the stories are difficult or nearly impossible to find and there's a reason for that. They are mostly not very good. These are not contemporary mysteries featuring believable characters and cleverly plotted stories (no PD James here). They are generally older Sherlock Holmes, Ellery Queen, Edgar Wallace type stories from the early to mid twentieth century that are quite dry and, frankly, boring. Each story has a short introduction where we are regularly informed that the author is a master who has won various literary awards for detective fiction. Maybe that was the case when the stories were written, but today this seems to be a collection only for the die hard fans of older pulp fiction detective tales. If you are not one of these fans it's best to give this a miss. Almost all of the stories, even the few that sound interesting, are ruined by the stilted readings that are more like a Pathe news broadcast and/or bad phony American accents. Really disappointing.

Live narrator but sounds like text-to-speech

Wanted something relaxing and festive to listen to whilst doing some Christmas chores. This sounded just the thing, and the first story actually sounded pretty much on target... for as long as I could bear to listen. For some reason the reader's intonation doesn't quite match the content, it feels like listening to an automated text reader, and it turns out that's really stressful and irritating after a while.
I'm going to have to abandon this and find something with a better reader to help me through my task!

Dull

The odd good story. Male narrator was good. Female narrator was so annoying I had to skip everything she read. Overall very disappointing:(

Poor

Such a shame Cat Gould’s narration was awful & Matthew Lloyd Davies only marginally better. Some of the stories were really good others I drifted off too!!