Murder for Christmas by Francis Duncan is a reissued classic crime story which was first published in 1949. It’s set in a large country house at Christmas where there is a murder and a limited number of suspects, each of whom is hiding a secret. This is not the first, or probably the last, book to use this theme and setting – it appears that the country house party will always be a popular background for a murder story despite the fact that most of us will never have experienced one !
Mordecai Tremaine has been invited to spend Christmas in a sleepy English village at the request of Benedict Grame. Tremaine isn’t the sort of person who would normally be invited to such as gathering except that, when a murder occurs, he feels the need to investigate as he has been instrumental in solving a similar mystery in the past – has he been invited because someone knew there would be a murder ?
This is a fun story, full of tension, lies and secrets. The characters are not particularly well developed and, if you’ve read a lot of mysteries, the murderer is quite obvious. It’s not gritty or gory at all and the plot is not particularly complex. The detail is enjoyable, however, and it is engaging to follow the investigators as they try to discover what has happened and how it has been achieved. This is a book of its time and, therefore, the social history aspects, especially of class relationships, that the author takes for granted are also interesting.
This is not a great crime novel but it is entertaining and, should you come across it, well worth a read. It was one of my 2024 Advent Calendar of Books – see here for what I thought when I first received it.
Anne Is Reading 