There is a yearly argument – online if nowhere else – as to whether Die Hard, the Bruce-Willis-versus-European-baddies action flick from 1988, is a Christmas movie.
It’s set during a holiday party, after all. But every year, people argue that it can’t be a Christmas film, for no other reason I think than the fact that it spills more blood than eggnog.
And yet I’d say that Christmas and crime are not such strange bedfellows. For one thing, Christmas is that time of year during which families are thrown together in close proximity, often in overly warm houses with bad weather threatening outside. The liquor flows, and dusk arrives early. Sounds like an occasion for murder to me.
In the golden age of detective fiction, most of the big-name authors took a crack at a Christmas-themed whodunnit. And quite a few are worth a read. But it’s not just the practitioners of locked-room mysteries who have inserted a yuletide spirit into a murderous tale. There are a few decent hardboiled novels that tackle the subject as well. Christmas can be a lonely time, especially in the big city, and that can lead to unfortunate consequences.
So here’s my personal list of favourite Christmas crime stories, all worth an evening in with a good bottle of your favourite drink at hand. And, by the way, Die Hard is indisputably a Christmas movie.
1. The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (1934)
It’s funny to think that this was the only Thin Man book Hammett wrote, despite the fact that it launched a six-film series. Like the classic first movie that paired William Powell and Myrna Loy (a perfect Christmas watch), this book is set during the yuletide season in Manhattan. Enviable couple Nick and Nora Charles solve a murder while mixing drinks and trading witticisms. Pure entertainment, and a well-plotted whodunnit.
2. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie (1938)
Besides short stories, this is the only Christie book explicitly set at Christmas time. And it’s a good one, with Poirot solving a very bloody murder that takes place on Christmas Eve in a country house. There’s a slew of suspects, an abundance of clues and, as always, Christie comes up with a clever surprise in the final chapters.
3. The Corpse in the Snowman by Nicholas Blake (1941)
Yes, there actually is a body hidden inside a snowman. There’s also a country house, sinister guests, an amateur detective and lots of Christmassy touches. Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Cecil Day-Lewis, better known as a poet laureate (and Daniel’s father), but he was also a well regarded mystery writer, and this is a wintry pleasure.
4. An English Murder by Cyril Hare (1951)
In this highly entertaining country house mystery, Lord Warbeck brings his family together for one last Christmas at his down-at–heel manor house. Like all good mysteries there is both the familiar – a sinister butler, a winter storm that downs the power lines – and the unfamiliar lurking in its pages.Advertisement
5. The Long Shadow by Celia Fremlin (1975)
Despite winning the Edgar award for her excellent novel The Hours Before Dawn, Fremlin is largely forgotten now. It’s a shame because her domestic thrillers are perfect examples of the genre, books that slyly explode the notion of domestic bliss. Here, a recent widow is beset by a sinister phone call accusing her of murder, and also by a slew of unwanted Christmas guests.
6. The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips (2000)
My personal favourite Christmas crime novel (I also love the under-seen film version from 2005 starring John Cusack), this is not for readers looking for cosiness. Set in 1979, the novel charts one night in the life of a Wichita mob lawyer, a Christmas Eve during which he plans to abscond with his boss’s money. It’s sleazy, dark and very funny.
7. Money, Money, Money by Ed McBain (2001)
Not the best of the 87th Precinct novels, but almost any McBain book is worth reading. In this one, it’s Christmastime in Isola (a thinly veiled Manhattan) and a murder leads to the discovery of a terrorist plot to bomb a performance hall. There are also some fun jabs at the publishing industry along the way, plus many ruminations on the follies of human nature.
8. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005)
While the bulk of the narrative is not set at Christmastime, a significant sequence toward the end of the book is, and so I’m qualifying this as Christmas crime. It’s certainly a wintry novel, with journalist Mikael Blomkvist agreeing to investigate a cold case (figuratively and literally) on a remote island in wintertime Sweden. With the help of computer hacker Lisbeth Salander they uncover the sinister, unnerving truth.
9. A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny (2011)
Three Pines, the fictional Quebec town that is the locale of Penny’s mystery novels, is tailor-made for Christmas tales. This is the second of the Inspector Gamache series and the holiday setting is beautifully described. The opening line sets the festive, murderous tone: “Had CC de Poitiers known she was going to be murdered she might have bought her husband, Richard, a Christmas gift.”
10. The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by PD James (2016)
James was often commissioned to write short stories for Christmastime. This slender collection contains four of them, including the title story – not only the best Christmas crime short story I’ve read, but one of my favourite short crime stories ever. An ageing crime writer looks back on the one time she was involved in an actual murder – a wartime holiday visit to her estranged grandmother. The story is both lovely and macabre, like the season it inhabits.
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