Transcript

Welcome to Mystery Books Podcast, where you’ll discover new mystery books and authors. I’m USA Today bestselling mystery author, Sara Rosett. I’m also a bookworm who specializes in the mystery genre. I love sharing my favorite mystery discoveries from classic golden age novels to contemporary cozies.

This is episode six of season four, and it’s all about Christmas mysteries. So this is a roundup episode. I didn’t. Take one individual book. I’m going to give you quite a few to choose from. Chances are your favorite holiday series has a holiday themed mystery. I can’t cover all of the Christmas mysteries in every series.  That would be one long podcast. But I can give you a sampling of some classic Whodunit mysteries set during the holidays, either written during the golden age of mystery 1920s to about 1950 or mysteries written by modern authors with a historical setting mostly 1920s to 1930s time period. We had to limit this somehow.  And so that’s what I’ve come up with.

So we’ll jump right in with Murder on a Midnight Clear. This is book six1920s High Society Lady Detective series. It was published in 2020 and the setting is in December of 1923. I’ll read you the blurb and give you a little bit of information about each one of these books.

So the blurb for Murder on a Midnight Clear is, Discreet sleuth for the posh set, Olive, visits Holly Hill Lodge, where an eclectic group has gathered to celebrate an old fashioned English Christmas. The guest list includes a celebrated lawn tennis champion, a fussy scientist studying snowflakes, a persuasive luggage salesman, a famous lady explorer, and the family’s eccentric aunt who has a fondness for the newfangled drinks called cocktails. When the butler goes missing, Olive and Jasper must work together to solve the Christmas crime.

And if you want more information about this, you can check out the season one bonus episode. It’s all about Murder on a Midnight Clear.

The next book is Murder at Midnight, book four in the Lily Adler series by Katharine Schellman. It was published in 1923 and the setting for this book is 1816. 

Here’s the blurb. Regency widow Lily Adler is looking forward to a quiet Christmas tide away from the schemes and secrets she witnesses daily in London.  Not only will she be visiting the family of her late husband, she will be reunited with Captain Jack Hartley, her friend and confidant finally returned after a long sea voyage. But when a body is found after an unexpected snowstorm, Lily quickly realizes that some people will stop at nothing to bury their secrets.

So this is a nice change of pace with the Regency setting. There are, I read a lot of books set in the 20s, 30s up to the 50s and there’s a lot of Victorian mysteries, but if you’re interested in historical mystery, there’s not quite as many Regency mystery series, so I enjoy that one about this series.

Next up, we have A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer, published in 1941. And that’s, her last name is spelled H E Y E R. 

Here’s the blurb. A colorful assortment of guests at a festive holiday house party discover there is a killer in their midst when their universally hated host is found dead, in a room locked from the inside.

That’s always nice when you can have a Christmas mystery combined with a locked room mystery. Now, this book was originally called Envious Casca, so you may have… seen it or read it underneath this other title. So just double check. The new title that they’re going with is A Christmas Party, which has much better SEO, I would imagine.  So I’m thinking that it’s probably getting more reads at the holiday time with its new title. 

All right. Next up is a very popular one called Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie. 1938 was its publication date. 

Here’s the blurb. Christmas Eve and the Lee family’s reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture and a high pitched wailing scream.  Upstairs, the tyrannical Simon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. When Poirot offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning But of mutual suspicion, it seems that everyone had their own reason to hate the old man. 

Now, this is a classic Christie, so you know it’s got a good plot, and it has a really good twist ending.  The reveal is very good. If you haven’t read it, I would definitely recommend picking up Poirot’s Christmas.

Alright, the fifth book that I think cozy readers would enjoy is called The Santa Claus Murder by Mavis Hay. It came out in 1936. 

Here’s the description. Aunt Mildred declared that no good could come of the Mulberry family Christmas gathering at their countryside residence, Flaxmere. So when Sir Osmond Mulberry, the family patriarch, dies on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos.

Got all the good ingredients there for a Christmas mystery.  If you haven’t heard of Mavis Hay she was a contemporary of Agatha Christie’s and wrote three mysteries that were published during the 1930s. This is the last mystery she wrote and it has an unusual structure. The after the murder occurs, the suspects, the characters, each have a point of view chapter where they tell what happened.  So it’s a different type of structure for the book, which makes it a little interesting and unusual. And it’s got that classic country house mystery set up at Christmas.

All right, next up for our last mystery, we have An English Murder by Cyril Hare, published in 1951. 

Here’s the description. The snow is thick, the phone line is down, and no one is getting in or out of Warbeck Hall. All is set for a lovely Christmas with friends and family gathered round the fire, except as the bells chime midnight, a murder is committed.  But who is responsible? The scorned young lover? The Lord’s passed over cousin? The social climbing politician’s wife? The history professor? The butler. Perhaps the real question is, can they survive long enough to find out? 

Now, I haven’t read this. I purchased it this year, read the opening chapters and realized it was a Christmas mystery, so I’ve put it aside.  I’ve been saving it for the holidays, so it will be one of the books that I read this December. 

So my question for you is what are your favorite holiday or Christmas mysteries? You can find me on Instagram at Sara Rosett or leave a comment on the show notes for this episode which will be at sararosett.com/Christmas. 

This episode is releasing in mid November, so you have plenty of time to gather up these holiday books if you want to give one of them a read this Christmas. I’m going to take off next week for Thanksgiving,  and then I will be back on December 7th with another episode about Murder in the Alps, which will be my new book that will come out in 2024.

I hope this podcast has let you revisit a favorite book or perhaps helped you discover a new author to try. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast, I hope you’ll tell a fellow mystery reader. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time.