A Surprise for Christmas – Martin Edwards (ed) (2020)

With thanks to the British Library for the review copy.

Well, it is always nice to have something of a Christmassy nature to read in the run up to Christmas. The British Library publish a few seasonal mysteries and anthologies which are perfect for the time of year, A Mystery in White, Portrait of a Murderer and The Santa Klaus Mystery just some of the Christmassy mysteries I have read in previous years.

In many of these stories Christmas is merely the device used by the author in bringing people together – there is often little in the way of what we might call Christmas spirit. In A Surprise for Christmas superbly edited by Martin Edwards this device is used a little less, because the stories themselves are so varied with different story telling styles employed. Here we have long held secrets, a Christmas ghost, jewellery thefts old stories of death and menace and a London criminal gang. The twelve stories in this collection vary in length considerably, but there is not a poor one among them, though of course I had my favourites. The authors themselves a veritable who’s who of Golden Age fiction, including Margaery Allingham and C K Chesterton though many of the immediately less recognisable names will be familiar to readers of British Library Crime Classics. Before each story there is a mini author biography – which helps set the story into some kind of context and is useful for readers not familiar with that writer’s work.

The collection opens with The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep by Catherine Louisa Perkis – the earliest of the stories first published in Ludgate Monthly in 1893. The story introduces the female detective Loveday Brooke who went on the appear in The Experiences of Loveday Brooke (1894). In this story Loveday works for a detective agency and is employed to solve a country house mystery. Some expensive jewels have gone missing while the household and guests were at dinner. Around the same time Loveday is intrigued by a newspaper report about a black bag found on a doorstep – her employers irritated at her distraction can’t understand her interest. Loveday’s method of detection is swift and intelligent paying close attention to detail and apparently missing nothing.

In Death on the Air by Ngaio Marsh an elderly man is found dead sat next to his radio set on the morning of Christmas day.

“On the 25^th of December at 7.30 a.m. Mr Septimus Tonks was found dead beside his radio set.

It was Emily Parks, an under-housemaid, who discovered him. She butted open the door and entered, carrying, mop, duster, and carpet-sweeper. At that precise moment she was greatly startled by a voice that spoke out of the darkness.

‘Good morning, everybody,’ said the voice in superbly inflected syllables, ‘and a Merry Christmas!’”

(Death on the Air – Ngaio Marsh)

We quickly learn that the victim was a mean, bullying individual – who held his family and those unfortunate enough to work for him in thrall to his temper. Marsh’s famous police duo Alleyn and Fox arrive and are aided in their investigations by the family doctor. The family, the secretary and the butler appear to each have motive for the crime – but how on earth was it achieved?

The title story is by Cyril Hare, A Surprise for Christmas is the shortest story in the collection at only five pages, and the one I can probably talk about the least. It is however one that stands out for me for its wonderful twist. Showing us that even the shortest of stories can pack quite a punch.

By contrast – Give me a Ring by Anthony Gilbert (the pseudonym of Lucy Malleson) is the longest story at something like 80 pages. The story begins on a foggy Christmas Eve in London. A young woman is preparing for a romantic, Christmassy evening with her fiancé – a doctor at one of the London hospitals. She is shopping when the fog comes down so thickly that she momentarily loses her bearings and finds herself in the wrong street. This is how she stumbles upon a little shop she has never seen before and is enchanted by the ring on display in the window. Her purchase of the ring propels her unwittingly into the middle of a terrifying conspiracy by a London criminal gang. The story has more of a thriller feel to it – but it is wonderfully taut storytelling and a real page turner.

In the ‘60s crime story; Father Christmas comes to Orbins by Julian Symons a seemingly unremarkable bookseller is in fact planning an audacious jewellery heist from a local department store with a group of assorted undesirables.

“He believed himself to be, in a quiet way a master of the criminal world.

Those associated with him were far from that, as he would immediately have acknowledged…There was Stacey, who looked what he was, a thick-nosed thug, there was a thin young man in a tight suit whose name was Jack Line, and who was always called Straight Line, and there was Lester Jones, the spotty assistant in the Jewellery Department.”

(Father Christmas Comes to Orbins by Julian Symons)

The final story in this collection is The Turn again Bell by Barry Perowne not an author I have come across before. On the day before Christmas Eve a village rector prepares for Christmas and for the wedding of his son on Boxing Day. Surrounding this eleventh century church there is a spine-tingling legend, that the church bell will toll unheard by anyone else if the rector of the church is due to die within the year. This is not the typical mystery story perhaps but I loved the simple wisdom of the rector and the atmosphere of the village with its ancient church.

This was a lovely collection, particularly good because there is some real variety here as it is not all country house murders (though I admit to being fond of those). Perfect company over this Christmas week I would suggest if you’re in the market for something of the type.