Tag: Christmas mystery

You Feta Watch Out

It doesn’t get much cozier than Linda Reilly’s You Feta Watch Out, the fifth installment of her Grilled Cheese Mystery series.

Carly Hale, proprietor of Carly’s Grilled Cheese Eatery and amateur sleuth has front row seats in the Flinthead Opera House, to watch her best friend Gina’s dress rehearsal of A Christmas Carol. However, before the day is done, Dickens’ beloved work has a fourth ghost or rather the actor, who had been playing Marley, was found dead with Scrooge’s boss’ chains around his neck and Carly’s bestie is a prime suspect.

With the help of a local journalist, the winking knowledge of the local police chief and a cast of characters as rich as her cheeses, Carly is committed to finding the real killer, proving Gina’s innocence – not an easy task, even a dangerous one when questioning actors, not knowing if they are telling the truth or plying their trade.

There will be no pouting if you read You Feta Watch Out and I highly recommend it for cozy mystery fans looking for a festive read. I received this advanced reader copy from Beyond the Book Publishing, courtesy of NetGalley. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

*If you enjoy holiday mysteries as much as I do, be sure to check out the Second Annual More Mystery Please Santa Advent calendar, beginning December 1 as I share my new holiday favorite reads, giveaways and more.

Can’t-put-it down holiday whodunit


Leave it to an author with a name like Noelle Albright to pen a can’t-put-it down holiday whodunit with just the right amount of lightness and dark, humor and suspense, colorful characters, red herrings and a ghost in The Christmas Eve Murders.

I read it in one sitting and absolutely loved it!

Picture the bucolic glacier valleys of the Yorkshire Dales on Christmas Eve. Then imagine breaking down there in a snowstorm en route to Edinburgh to spend the holidays with the family. You realize you don’t have a cell signal when a strange man knocks on your window. That’s how journalist Maddie Marlow finds herself spending Christmas Eve with the locals at the Merry Monarch, just in time for the annual scavenger hunt.

Despite not knowing anyone, for Maddie, choosing teams for the evening’s festivities was easy. Choosing allegiances after a murder takes place in the snowbound pub is a whole other story. Who can she trust?

I highly recommend The Christmas Eve Murders to readers who enjoy humor and suspense in equal measures. I received this advanced reader copy from Quercus, courtesy of NetGalley. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

*If you enjoy holiday mysteries as much as I do, be sure to check out the Second Annual More Mystery Please Santa Advent calendar, beginning December 1 as I share my new holiday favorite reads, giveaways and more.

Crimes for Christmas

Edited by Otto Penzler, Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop: Twelve Tales of Seasonal Suspense Set in the World’s Oldest Mystery Specialty Store offers readers a grand collection of holiday murder and mystery short stories by noteworthy, award-winning and international bestselling authors, including Jason Starr, Lyndsay Faye, Loren Estleman, Ace Atkins, Rob Hart, Laura Lippman, Jeffery Deaver, David Gordon and Martin Edwards.

Some of these Christmas tales are treasures that take you back to the golden era of crime fiction. My favorite is A Christmas Puzzle by acclaimed Icelandic author Ragnar Jónasson. I felt as if I had discovered a lost manuscript of Christie or Marsh. The pacing, the subtle clues, the climax…perfection!

Aficionado of misdirection and the locked room mystery, UK author Tom Mead offers readers a fun holiday twist on an old theme in Hester’s Gift. Though other reviewers may give more details in an overview about the story, I don’t want to lay out any clues before your eyes reach the actual page.

Each of the stories has a different feel to it. In fact, Laura Lippman’s ironic tale, Snowflake Time, seems like it could be ripped from the headlines.

I own several of Penzler’s previous collections and enjoy pulling them out each year. This one is no exception. I highly recommend Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop.

While I received an advance reader’s copy from The Mysterious Press, courtesy of NetGalley, I’ve already purchased a digital version so that I can re-read these wonderful stories. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop
More Mystery Please

*If you enjoy holiday mysteries as much as I do, be sure to check out the Second Annual More Mystery Please Santa Advent calendar, beginning December 1.

My new favorite Christmas mystery

I think USA Today bestselling author Alexandra Benedict may have just given me the gift of my most favorite Christmas mystery novel of all time – The Christmas Jigsaw Murders.

After receiving a parcel with six jigsaw pieces on her doorstep, Edie O’Sullivan, a crotchety octogenarian and renowned crosswords setter (whom I imagined as Stephanie Cole AKA Doc Martin’s Auntie Joan) must solve the most important puzzle of her life.

A cryptic note with the package read, “Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.” Signed, Rest in Pieces.

Recognizing something worrisome pictured in one of the puzzle pieces, Edie shares some of what she knows with her nephew/adopted son, DI Sean Brand-O’Sullivan. When a man is attacked and left for dead with a jigsaw piece in his hand, Sean forbids Edie from investigating any further in an effort to protect her.

Needless to say, Edie — a self-proclaimed pain in the arse, who has always gotten in her own way but has always done everything she could to protect Sean — is determined that she is the only one who can solve the mystery but she will have to face her demons to do so.

Also author of The Christmas Murder Game and Murder on the Christmas Express, Benedict gives readers everything we need in a page-turner of a modern-day Christmas mystery. A ticking clock, characters with rich layers of back-story and humor, red herrings, suspects and true to the title, you need all the pieces to really solve the puzzle.

I ho-ho heartily recommend The Christmas Jigsaw Murders to fans of British mysteries, cozy mysteries, Christmas mysteries, LGBTQ+ mysteries and fans of anagrams, which Benedict has peppered throughout the novel, with nods to Dickens, Christine McVie and Fleetwood Mac.

I received an advance readers copy from Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, courtesy of NetGalley. Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

Review by Di Prokop, More Mystery Please

*If you enjoy holiday mysteries as much as I do, be sure to check out the Second Annual More Mystery Please Santa Advent calendar, beginning December 1.

Locked room Murder on the Christmas Express

Murder on the Christmas Express cover on desk with magnifying glass, antique typewriter, telephone, radio
Murder on the Christmas Express takes newly retired Met Detective Roz Parker on a first-class sleeper car trip – a parting gift from her colleagues – as she makes her way home to the Scottish Highlands for the holidays and the impending premature birth of her granddaughter.

Several references to the is Die Hard really a Christmas movie debate among a group of university students en route to try out for a reality quiz show was among the first clues that this wasn’t a cozy yuletide mystery.

Alexandra Benedict, author of The Christmas Murder Game, still embeds Christmas-related anagrams and quizzes into her well-plotted puzzle where the protagonist comes to terms with the death of her mother.

There is also a crippling snowstorm but this time, however, Benedict offers us an emotional locked room mystery that has our detective flashbacking to some of her own trauma, while trying to solve one last case, as the reader soon discovers that the dead aren’t the only victims.

Eighteen passengers and a cat board the train in London – some known to each other, some not. You’ll have to read for yourself to discover how many will live to disembark under their own power.

I recommend Murder on the Christmas Express for mystery lovers, puzzle lovers and readers of non-traditional holiday-themed novels.

I received this Advance Reader’s copy of Murder on the Christmas Express from Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, courtesy of NetGalley.

Order online or buy now at your favorite independent bookstore. Mine is Sellers Books and Art in Jim Thorpe, PA.

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