It usually takes rather more page count to be a success in this genre, but this collection, from big names in the field, manages to do the job well. When a investigator from Scotland Yard turns up to have a go investigating he discovers a large footprint on a hedge which wouldn’t be able to hold a cat's weight let alone a humans. The short stories in this book are concise and they all deal with either murder or tragic incidents – just what I was looking for and yet… I did not enjoy this book as much as I wanted to. All in all, MURDER ON CHRISTMAS EVE provided a terrific mix of mysteries ideally suited for a fireside read next to your Christmas Tree! But hurry… It's Christmas Eve and if you don't find the murderer in time, you won't make it home in time to spend Christmas Day with your loved ones!

Val McDermid has one of the most powerful tales with her contribution entitled 'A Wife In a Million'. The ironic part of the story is that they tie the murders to an unemployed man seeking revenge against companies that rejected him. A 16-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a 22-year-old woman was stabbed to death in south London. Most were what I'd class as "traditional" mysteries, there's nothing gory or gruesome in any of them.There are six, seven to eight suspects all who have read and handled the manuscript throughout the night, though none of them took it. This radical essay explores patriarchy and capitalism’s impact on beauty ideals, and inspires us to embrace our own disobedient bodies.

Like many other short story collections that involve some sort of theme, there are tales here that are full of Christmas spirit and others that merely use this time of year as an ironic reference point for the central action.They may have improved if I had persevered but I had other books that I would rather be reading over the festive period. This one had a Sherlock Holmes feel to it, it’s about a rich man's club - The Santa Claus Club - where one of the members feels for his life. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award.

This one is about a man just out of prison with no real way to make money, so he decides to dress as Santa and raid a hotel. Paramedics from the London Ambulance Service and London’s Air Ambulance provided emergency first aid to the woman, but she died at the scene. It was interesting to have Rebus pop up in his own inimitable way and the ending of that story was satisfying in a way only Rebus can. Michael Andrecut, 22, from Corduff, west Dublin, appeared before a special sitting of the Criminal Courts of Justice on Saturday morning.Possibly having as close a remit as crimes committed on one particular day is too limiting but I found the ten stories presented here lacklustre at best. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

Though Father Brown sees through his lies and discovered that the brother isn’t the made he says he is; he is the adopted son, and the body is of the last brother he killed earlier, and has be pretending to be him the whole time. This one is a story in a story about magical painting, one of four that correspond with the seasons. As my last Christmas murder mystery was a disappointment, I jumped right into this with fingers crossed the title really meant what it read. I’d say this is a book to pick up if ur bored, wanna do some mindless reading or to put the mindset back after a lousy book. What I enjoyed most is that the stories selected for MURDER ON CHRISTMAS EVE are not just modern, some are classic stories written decades earlier.

Cecily Gayford studied English at the University of Oxford, where she wrote her thesis on the 'golden age' detective stories of the 1930s and 1940s. Val McDermid is a number one bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than forty languages, and have sold over eighteen million copies. This was a good one, a young woman wakes up to find that she has be accused of attempted murder, but having no recollection of it.