This collection is from the British Library’s Crime Classics series and features 11 stories by some surprising (and surprisingly forgotten) crime writers. I found it at one of the coolest independent books stores I’ve ever seen. If you are ever in the Cincinnati area, particularly Sharonville (a northern suburb), check out out the Book Bus Depot. The store is a non-profit with the goal of raising money to promote childhood literacy and to build up classroom libraries. I met the owner when I visited, and she does have a book bus that goes out into the community to sell books during summer months. The “depot” is a small bookstore store with a great cafe and boutique attached. Not only does this store have a fantastic mission, but the books on offer are simply incredible. For example, the Book Bus Depot is the only bookstore in the US to sell books from Persephone Press. Read about that here . Anyway, I will be making many MANY trips to this store and throwing down stupid money there because we bought a house less than a mile away from it! BWAHAHAHA!!!
The stories in The Christmas Card Crime — which I picked up due its beautiful cover — range from under 10 pages long to just over 40. The only author I was familiar with was Baroness Orczy, and what a surprise to see her here! I was only ever familiar with her through The Scarlet Pimpernel, but did you know she actually started out as a crime writer? It seems that the writers in this collection were all fairly successful and well known for their crime fiction in their lifetimes, with members of the Detection Club and the Crime Writers Association represented here. The stories are all pretty good but not every story is outstanding. I hate to say it but Orczy’s “A Christmas Tragedy,” which opens the collection and features a woman detective, was not great in my opinion; it includes some class-based stereotypes and a rather simple solution to the crime, but it was still exciting to see that Orczy and her protagonist Lady Molly were popular in the early 20th century.
My favorite stories tended to be the longer ones. “The Christmas Card Crime,” by Donald Stuart, is a thriller set during a snowstorm. A group of strangers on a train are stranded in a storm just before Christmas and take refuge in a small inn. Among these are dramatist and amateur detective Trevor Lowe and his friend Detective Inspector Shadgold. The party includes a young woman, clearly in distress, and a group of fairly average men. Noises in the night awaken the sleuths and they discover both a body and the disappearance of the young woman. Then the innkeeper is killed before he can reveal crucial information to the investigators. “Blind Man’s Hood” by Carter Dickson, a Pennsylvanian who married and moved to England, is a spooky story inspired by a real unsolved murder. A young married couple travels to visit friends for the holiday. When they arrive at the 17th-century country house in a remote part of Kent, the friends are out. The couple are greeted by a maid, and she begins to tell them the history of the property, focusing on the unsolved murder of a young woman who had lived there in the mid-19th century. “Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech” by Cyril Hare is a twisty tale of blackmail. Timothy Trent is a successful man of finance who has been the object of a blackmail campaign for years. He knows it is a member of his own family and resolves to take care of the problem once and for all when he sees them at Christmas. Some very interesting plot twists occur in this one. John Bingham, who wrote “Crime at Lark Cottage,” is a fascinating character himself. Bingham was an MI5 agent who became a fiction writer, as did his younger colleague David Cornwell, aka John le Carré. It is believed that le Carré based his character George Smiley on Bingham. “Crime at Lark Cottage” takes place on a snowy, rainy night in a remote village. A man named Bradley, experiencing car trouble, approaches the only cottage in the area for help. Inside are a woman and her young daughter, and it is clear that the woman is on edge and afraid. She is adamant that Bradley should stay the night and we gradually learn what she is afraid of — her husband is a convicted murderer and has escaped prison. I enjoyed the suspense Bingham created in this tale. And finally, the last story in the collection “Twixt the Cup and the Lip,” by Julian Symons, might be the best of all. Symons was a very successful crime writer and won multiple awards for his fiction. This story is about a jewel heist featuring an unlikely group of collaborators. The mastermind is Mr. Payne, the distinguished owner of a rare book shop who also has a serious gambling problem. He has stolen jewels before and has a certain group of people he works with. Symons does a wonderful job showing the character of each man and the company he keeps outside his involvement with Payne. I love the attention to detail in this story. You get the sense that something will go wrong, but the who/why/how is never obvious.
This was a great book to end CBR16 and I recommend it to lovers of crime fiction and short stories. While some stories are stronger than others, they are all quite entertaining. I might have to look for these writers’ other stories and novels.