A review by bookwyrm_lark
Gone Before Christmas by Charles Finch

4.0

Gone Before Christmas is almost a locked-room puzzle, with a victim who vanishes from a room with only one door. As puzzles go, it's a good one, although if you've read enough detective fiction, you'll spot the figurative loophole to the locked-room aspect. Since I do read a lot of mysteries, I figured out part of it fairly early on (how the victim got out of the room) but I anticipated neither the motive nor the whole solution. Nor did I expect Lenox's response, though in retrospect, it wasn't out of character. I enjoyed the chance to spend an hour or two of the holidays with these characters, whom I know so well from the books: Charles, of course; his 5-year-old daughter Sophia and his wife Lady Jane; his widowed brother Edmund; and both of Charles's partners, Polly and Lord Dallington. A quick but satisfying Christmas mystery.