Cecily Gayford

Murder on Christmas Eve

Katharina Hoffmann

When I bought Murder on Christmas Eve, I was simply looking for a nice collection of short stories that would keep me entertained during the holidays.

The short stories in this book are concise and they all deal with either murder or tragic incidents – just what I was looking for and yet… I did not enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. The short stories came across as too sophisticated, it felt like the authors had tried too hard. Some of them seemed like they should have been longer but instead have been reduced, too densely packed for a good short story. I was also missing some form of symbolism or higher literary meaning, which the likes of Dostoevsky and Wilde manage to incorporate so superbly in their own short stories.

This book was sadly more tedious than entertaining and didn’t manage to impress me.

Eleanor Luhar

My dad gave me a few 'festive' crime/detective books for Christmas, and this is the first of the three I have read so far. It contains short stories from a selection of well-known authors in the genre, including Ian Rankin, Val McDermid and eight others. All taking place during the holiday season, the tales center around bizarre events that appear to have no rational explanation.

The stories and crimes are all very strange and it's really interesting to see how the cases were solved. Who knew a cat could solve a murder? And the case of the missing manuscript had a very unexpected conclusion indeed.

I got the sense from these stories that I would have appreciated them more if I had read other works by the authors beforehand. Still, the stories were really interesting and had that classical mystery/detective feel to them. 3/5 stars.

Murder on Christmas Eve

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