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A review by thecommonswings
A Very Murderous Christmas: Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season by Cecily Gayford
3.0
A lot more hit and miss than the previous Christmas crime collection, mainly because all three modern attempts at the form are absolute stinkers: Colin Dexter’s central idea here is a great one but the Morse story feels like it’s his notes for a proper tale that he submitted in a panic, with most of the story just a précis; Rendell’s contribution feels like a scanty idea for a Vine novel that she realised would’ve been terrible so instead turns it into a terrible short story instead; Horowitz is the worst, with a thin joke of a story trying desperately to feel like a classic crime story but instead sounding like a jocular uncle laughing in a really strained way at you at a Christmas party to cover the fact he’s going through a bitter divorce (plus a really, really weird joke about Estonians that just dribbles out)
All the others? Absolutely great. Blake’s story is a nice touch with a puzzle for the reader; the Allingham story is a bit more conventional than the one in Murder for Christmas but still allows Campion to shine at his best; the Hoch story threatens to get very, very weird but at the last minute just about saves itself despite a decidedly dodgy motive... it just reminds you that the golden age writers were better at short stories because there was a regular audience to hone your skills with them. That’s pretty much gone now (unlike horror, which has a significantly smaller but still thriving short form world tootling along nicely) and it really tells when the modern writers try and apply it
All the others? Absolutely great. Blake’s story is a nice touch with a puzzle for the reader; the Allingham story is a bit more conventional than the one in Murder for Christmas but still allows Campion to shine at his best; the Hoch story threatens to get very, very weird but at the last minute just about saves itself despite a decidedly dodgy motive... it just reminds you that the golden age writers were better at short stories because there was a regular audience to hone your skills with them. That’s pretty much gone now (unlike horror, which has a significantly smaller but still thriving short form world tootling along nicely) and it really tells when the modern writers try and apply it