Paul Massey
If you ask us, there’s no moment that can’t be improved by a classic murder mystery, but winter, and especially the dreary post-Christmas period, is really the perfect time. Most mysteries are easy to read, which makes them ideal for a time when your brain is a bit sluggish with food and wine, and there’s plenty out there with snowy, wintry settings that lend themselves to the season. We’ve raided the Golden Age for our favourite winter murder mysteries, so put your feet up by the fire, get a glass of something delicious, and enjoy.
Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh (1941)
Ngaio Marsh is often named as one of the queens of Golden Age crime fiction, along with Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, and while her creation Detective Inspector Alleyn doesn’t have quite the memorable personality of a Poirot or a Lord Peter Wimsey, she does an excellent line in settings. This 11th book in the Alleyn series sees our hero struggling through the snow to an isolated country house, of course, in the splendidly named village of Cloudyfold, where a manipulative host, Jonathan Royal, has assembled a group of guests to provide maximum drama. They include an Austrian surgeon, the woman he once disfigured, and her two sons who are rivals in love. It really is one of the best Alleyns, and a great place to start with this extensive series.
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers (1934)
The charming Lord Peter Wimsey and his manservant Bunter are on their way to stay with friends on New Year’s Eve when a car accident in the misty Fenlands strands them in the village of Fenchurch St Paul. Forced to take refuge at the local vicarage, they soon become entangled in a mystery stretching back decades, involving the theft of an emerald necklace, corpses turning up in the wrong graves, and a lot of bell ringing. Complex and twisting as all of Dorothy L Sayers’ mysteries are, this has unquestionably the best atmosphere and the best plot of them all. The ending is absolutely exquisite, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable winter read all the way through.
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Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie (1938)
The family of a spiteful patriarch makes its way to Gorston Hall for Christmas, but when his manipulations get out of control, he is slaughtered in a murder that’s unusually bloody for Agatha Christie. Is it the downtrodden stay-at-home son, the expensively glamorous daughter-in-law, the exotic Spanish granddaughter, or one of the other troubled characters who populate this atmospheric tale? The murder is literally overflowing with blood, but why? It gives Christie a chance to quote Lady Macbeth (‘who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?) and also gives Hercule Poirot something interesting to chew over. As usual, the culprit is the last person you’d expect.
The Corpse in the Snowman by Nicholas Blake (1940)
The Nigel Strangeways series is one of the lesser known of the Golden Age era, but with beautiful writing by Cecil Day-Lewis (writing under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake), it’s well worth a look. There are two excellent Christmas mysteries in the series, Thou Shell of Death and The Corpse in the Snowman (otherwise known as The Case of the Abominable Snowman), but the latter is my favourite. The apparent suicide of the beautiful and notorious Elizabeth Restorick at her family’s country house in Essex sets off a chain of events that takes Strangeways months to untangle. There’s a corpse in a snowman, unsurprisingly, which places this within a niche sub-genre of murder mysteries in which the body is only discovered when snow or ice melts, and a typical cast of aristocratic ghouls for our literary sleuth to investigate.
The Blue Carbuncle by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)
No murder here, but Sherlock Holmes is still on fine form for the festive season. The story involves a stolen jewel, a lost Christmas goose, and a chase (goose chase!) through London on the trail of both. While this is a particularly good story for Christmas given the setting, we’d happily enjoy any of the Sherlock Holmes adventures at this time of year, with their misty London atmosphere, gas lamps and Hackney carriages.
Mystery in White by J. Jefferson Farjeon (1937)
Another snowstorm, this time disrupting a train journey and sending the passengers to a sinister and lonely country house. Farjeon was a contemporary of Christie and Sayers (the latter admired his ‘creepy skill’ in mysteries), but his works were largely forgotten until this one was revived in the brilliant British Library ‘Crime Classics’ series in 2014. This mystery is certainly creepy: the house appears to have been got ready for the visitors’ arrival, but by whom? A violent streak in one of the guests soon emerges, and with injuries and illness among the group, a sense of anarchy takes hold.
Death Comes at Christmas (Dead Men’s Morris) by Gladys Mitchell (1936)
Psychoanalyst and amateur detective Mrs Bradley is one of the weirdest creations of mystery fiction, and the plots, often full of folklore and mythology, are generally utterly incomprehensible. Still, when you’ve had a lot to eat and drink, you can just sit back and let it all wash over you without worrying too much. On a visit to her nephew’s pig farm in the Oxfordshire countryside, our sleuth becomes suspicious when a solicitor is found dead of an apparent heart attack on the banks of the river. There are plenty of technical details about pig farming, as well as a healthy dose of ghosts, heraldry and Morris dancing. What more could you want?
