Crime at Christmas

Who Killed Father Christmas ? is a collection of crime short stories from the early twentieth century edited by Martin Edwards. There are fifteen in the book but none of them is very long which makes it great to dip in and out of when you have a few spare moments. The authors featured include some very well-known names of the period such as John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes, Catherine Aird and Michael Gilbert but I thought that the standard was high throughout the collection irrespective of the author.

Some of the stories are a bit spooky or unsettling and many of them assume that Christmas in Britain will be accompanied by snow. Not all of them are murder stories and a few have some very cunning burglaries at the heart of them. The title story is set in a department store toy department. They all consist of a puzzle and many use series detectives to find a solution.

I really enjoyed this collection of stories. I liked the short length of them and the Christmassy atmosphere. They were pleasant to read and none of them was a failure – some will appeal more to some readers than others, of course. I don’t often read short stories but I liked these. Val McDermid published a volume of her own short stories also set at Christmas which I enjoyed too – you can read my review here