A review by helen
A Very Murderous Christmas by Cecily Gayford

3.0

For some reason, in Britain, we've decided that Christmas + crime = comforting. G.K. Chesterton’s master criminal Flambeau summed it up when he said “my last crime was a Christmas crime, a cheery, cosy, English middle-class crime; a crime of Charles Dickens. I did it in a good old middle-class house near Putney, a house with a crescent of carriage drive, a house with a stable by the side of it, a house with the name on the two outer gates, a house with a monkey tree.”

My favourites in this collection were the Rumpole of the Bailey one, which has an excellent punchline, and the Anthony Horowitz one set in a Christmas cracker factory.

I could've done with a brief introduction to each short story, giving some context (e.g. original publication date, setting etc.).