November 9, 2023

Alexandra Benedict (left) has confected a seasonal version of the traditional locked room mystery. Our locked room is actually a train, heading from Euston to Fort William just a few hours before the big day, but forced to stop in the middle of nowhere because of deep snow. Former Metropolitan Police copper Roz Parker is heading north on the train, not particularly for Christmas, but to be with her daughter who is about to give birth.

Her immediate fellow passengers are not people she would have chosen to be her traveling companions. There is Meg, a brittle, vacuous, Instagram-joined-at-birth, reality TV star and ‘influencer’, who live streams every moment of her life to her adoring followers. She was my odds on favourite to be bumped off, even before the Amazon publicity page for the book confirmed that it was she whose demise Roz would be investigating. Her boyfriend, Grant, is what they used to call ‘a nasty piece of work.’ By complete contrast we have Sally and Phil. Sally is stressed, jealous, and the mum-of-four, while husband Phil is a devoted dad and former teacher of Meg, the soon-to-be victim of the unknown killer.

Benedict sets out her list of suspects in the traditional way. Beck is a rather self-obsessed student and a passionate pub quizzer, while red parka-wearing Ember is an unhappy woman in her thirties with a dark past. A train steward, nicknamed ‘Beefy’, appears avuncular and honest, but it turns out he had a fixation with Meg – as did the mysterious Iain, who has no ticket for the the journey, therefore is keen not to be discovered by Beefy. He has gone one further than Beefy’s doe-eyed worship of Meg, and has stalked her to the extent of having a restraining order slapped on him. How about Craig, who Roz has taken a shine to? But he works for the Crown Prosecution Service so, surely, it can’t be him, can it?

The mechanics of ‘whodunnits’ are not particularly complex for writers, but for readers (who don’t cheat and skip to the last chapter) things can be be more complex. In this case, do we say that it couldn’t be Grant, because that would be too obvious? Or, do we think that the author is double bluffing us, and that it is the self-centred narcissist after all? It couldn’t be Phil, could it? Or did something happen back in the day when Meg was his pupil?

Needless to say, Roz Parker has to put aside her anxieties about her soon-to-be grandchild, and find out who killed Meg, a woman who may have been the most insubstantial of role-models, but was still a human being who deserves justice. Murder on the Christmas Express casts a sardonic eye over the way we live now, throwing in a conception-by-sperm donor for Roz’s daughter, and a sapiosexual love affair (look it up – I had to) while retaining its connection to the skillfully plotted murder mysteries of The Golden Age. For good measure, the author throws in some additional quiz attractions such as embedding the titles of Kate Bush songs in the narrative, and sprinkling some anagrams of her favourite poems and stories within the text. This entertaining novel is published by Simon and Schuster and is available now.

Janice Hallett (left) invites us to return to the idyllic village of Lower Lockwood, where her book The Appeal (2021) was set. Then, law students Charlotte Holroyd and Femi Hassan solved a particularly nasty murder but, goodness me, murder seems to haunt Lower Lockwood rather as it does the unfortunate community of Midsomer, and so they are back again when another corpse is found, threatening the production of the annual village panto. Was ever a production of Jack and The Beanstalk so fraught with difficulties?

Our two sleuths (now fully qualified) spend little time on their hands and knees with magnifying glasses looking for minute physical traces which may betray the assailant; rather, they sit in front of their smartphones, perusing emails, WhatsApp messages, texts and other communications floating around in the digital ether. The clues are all there and, unlike the ancient trope of detectives trying to read messages from letters hastily burnt in fireplaces, these words can never be totally erased.

This novella is inventively set up with little or no conventional narrative and makes extensive use of graphics representing WhatsApp messages (above) and emails which are now known as ’round-robins’. Being an old pedant, I have to say that this is a misuse of the expression, as the dictionary says:

The term has come to be used to describe emails cc-d to multiple recipients, and those awful little printed slips inside Christmas cards telling friends (not for much longer, if I get them) all the wonderful things that have been happening to the sender’s family since the last Christmas card. Janice Hallett, by the way, makes fun of these dreadful things from the word go.

But I digress. You will either love the set up of the story, or hate it. I enjoyed it while it lasted – just 187 pages – but I suspect it wouldn’t work in a longer book.

The story begins when Charlotte and Femi receive a massive folder (all digital of course) of evidence from their former mentor, Roderick Tanner KC. The folder contains transcriptions of police interviews and copies of all communications between those involved when a long-dead body in a Santa Suit was found hidden in a giant beanstalk prop – made mostly of wood, papier–mâché and, heaven forfend, possible traces of asbestos. The beanstalk was constructed years previously for a production of the play, and so this is the coldest of cold cases. The mystery is solved as Charlotte and Femi pick up the hints from the emails, texts and messages, but along the way, Janice Hallett takes the you-know-what out of some of the more insufferable pretensions in modern society (below).

The Christmas Appeal initially deceives as it seems to wear a cloak embroidered with ‘Cosy Crime’, but this is soon shed in favour of some rather sharp satire. It has wit, charm and flair and is published by Viper. It is available now.