Christmas is Murder by C.S. Challinor
(Midnight Ink, $13.95, NV) ISBN 978-0-7387-1359-5
"Scottish barrister Rex Graves has been invited to the East Sussex hotel of an old family friend, Mrs. Smithings, a recent widow who has had quite a lot of sadness in her life recently.
Rex is greeted with an unusual assortment of guests and staff: a honeymooning couple (he an EMT), an annoying literary agent from New York, a newly divorced woman and her friend and World War II veteran who Rex did not have the pleasure of meeting as Mr. Lawdry died just before Rex’s arrival.
No one is suspicious of Mr. Lawdry’s death (he is being kept in a room with open windows as a snow storm is preventing emergency personnel from getting to the remote hotel; Rex arrived on tennis rackets as snow shoes) except for EMT Charley Perkins who suspects the old man was poisoned. Having little else to do, Rex agrees to nose around and, as he does, other deaths occur, leaving Rex with the sinking feeling that the guests are being picked off one by one and the last one standing will be tagged it.
In true English cozy form, by the time the snows lift and the constabulary arrives, Rex has solved the murder in classic style.
Christmas is Murder has all the elements traditional English cozy fans have come to love. The plot is tight, suspects limited and an investigation uses Rex’s wit rather than a lot of outside sources. The setting is lovely and the characters entertaining without being so overdrawn as to appear as caricatures. A great start to a new series that is sure to become a modern favorite traditional English cozy series."
All Carson Reno Mystery Series Books are standalone novels. It is not necessary to read them in any particular order.
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