appropriately enough, this is a Christmas themed murder mystery set in a tiny village in deepest darkest Cumbria.
The basic story- a London copper, James Walker, after being threatened by a local crime lord he sent down who has just been released early, moves to the village his wife grew up in in the depths of the Cumbrian countryside. They've barely settled in when he receives a parcel delivered to his front door with a message threatening that 12 people are going to die, one for each of the days of Christmas, and they'll all deserve it.
He treats it like a hoax until people start dying.
It's a promising set up for a story and the whole thing is a nice little unchallenging ripping yarn.
I call it unchallenging because I spotted the killer within a page of his first appearance. I didn't think any of the red herrings were convincing enough to dissuade me for even a second from my guess at the killer's identity.
The writing is basic and occasionally quite repetitive. He must have quoted the initial threatening message at least a dozen times in the opening chapters. Information is frequently restated in consecutive chapters in case the reader has forgotten what was written on the page before last.
Slight spoilers ahead.
As a detective story goes, I have to say I wouldn't want this guy investigating any crimes I reported. He doesn't seem to do that much detective work and pretty much solves it by accident at the end by walking ion on the killer as they're tooling up for that night's kill. As a police procedural it seems unconvincing. Surely this would be a situation that called for a curfew as soon as they realised it was a genuine spree killer in the village. But they're more concerned with trying not to panic people than actually doing something to keep them safe.
There are some dangling plot threads concerning the London villain they fled from, and I'm guessing he'll appear in one of the three sequels. From a quick google search, it seems that this village will be visited by serial killers over the festive period at least three more times. That could stretch credulity more than slightly. A village of 700 people with 4 separate Christmas themed killers in 4 years?
It's all lightweight enough that I was happy to suspend the disbelief this time around and I quite enjoyed it, even though it's far from the best thing I've read this year. I might even splash out on book two to see if his detective skills have improved.
If you just want an easy read and a fun story and you don't want any kind of challenge, there's no reason not to read this. You'll have fun with it. Not every book needs to be a stone cold classic. this is the literary equivalent of a big mac compared to an expensive steak at a quality restaurant. It does the job well enough even though it's not the greatest thing you've ever had.
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