Reviewed by Craig Sisterson
It is Christmas Day and at Champton Rectory, Canon Daniel Clement and his mother Audrey are joined by the residents and guests of the big house to drink, eat and be merry.
At the festive feast, peace and goodwill prevail.
Until two meet under the mistletoe. One of them falls down dead. And Daniel suspects murder has returned to Champton...
Can Daniel and Detective Sergeant Neil Vanloo solve the crime and catch the Christmas killer?
Last year, the Reverend Richard Coles, who seems like a really lovely man (having seen him at festivals and events, etc), got all doubly trendy by adding the 'writing a Christmas book' arrow to his 'TV celebrities writing crime novels' bow, so to speak. A publicist's dream, perhaps...
I do like to read a few Christmas-themed books around the holiday season, including crime novels, and have really enjoyed the likes of The Mistletoe Murder And Other Stories by P.D. James and Christmas is Murder: A Chilling Short Story Collection by Val McDermid in recent years.
Funnily enough, in each case those books from two Queens of Crime contained multiple short stories or novellas, sort of like lovely little stocking fillers for the season. High quality though, very good reads, the titular tales and others included. Well worth reading.
So rather than being put off by the slim (140 pages or so) nature of Richard Coles festive offering, Murder Under the Mistletoe, I was intrigued, and really looking forward to a lovely one-sitting read, digging into a festive mystery.
Sadly, while Coles does a pretty good job with the 'festive', he faceplants with the mystery.
Most of Murder Under the Mistletoe lathers readers in oft-fascinating, sometimes overdone details of the parish preparations by Canon Daniel Clement and his formidable mother Audrey, for the festive services and a stress-inducing Christmas Dinner that unexpectedly grows in size and importance when the local Lord and his family are added to the guest list.
Rather than an early dead body that provokes a fascinating investigation full of suspects, motives, red herrings, and revelations, Coles delays the death itself (trumpeted in the title and blurb) til very late in the piece - which in of itself isn't fatal to a good crime read, but unfortunately he's compressed the 'investigation' to such a point its nearly non-existent, erasing may of the reasons a lot of readers may pick up a 'festive mystery'.
There's little to no mystery (I actually picked the killer before the murder even occurred), and most things surrounding the crime are fairly obvious. Coles serves up some wit or charm with his characters, and big fans of his ongoing series may enjoy spending some more time with the regulars in a festive setting, but overall Murder Under the Mistletoe feels like a short story idea that could have been great at 15-25 pages but instead was stretched out to 140 or so.
One for the ardent Coles fans, perhaps, not first-timers to his oeuvre.
Craig Sisterson is a lawyer turned writer, editor, podcast host, awards judge, and event chair. He's the founder of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, co-founder of Rotorua Noir, author of Macavity and HRF Keating Award-shortlisted non-fiction work SOUTHERN CROSS CRIME, editor of the DARK DEEDS DOWN UNDER anthology series, and writes about books for magazines and newspapers in several countries.
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