Chief Inspector MacDonald is invited to an unusual party. Each guest is sent around the country estate with cryptic clues, full of puzzles and puns, to unravel, which will lead them to the next clue. Unfortunately for the players, a brief electrical outage reveals a dead body in the telephone room.
The cast of village characters becomes a network of suspects, amateur detectives, and gossips — each trying to piece together the events of the evening.
Nap Lombard wrote this novel set in Blitz London while they were living it. In fact, they were air-raid wardens themselves — the simultaneous monotony and chaos of inspired their writing.
Whoever says crime and Christmas don’t go together is just wrong. Editor Martin Edwards has put together a delightful selection of Yuletide crime stories, cheerful enough to put any reader into the holiday spirit.
The main reason I love writing about books is that I get a sneak preview of what’s coming. Remember when you were a kid and you got the giant catalog from JC Penney or Montgomery Ward and you would go through it and dream about your Christmas presents? Getting a publisher catalog and sifting through titles is a lot like that. And the fall / winter release season is always the biggest time of the year in book publishing. This week’s Top Ten Tuesday is a preview of some of the books I can’t wait to read, coming out in the second half of 2019.