'Big Book Of Christmas Mysteries' Offers Yule Time Fun And Crime

Patrick Anderson at the Washington Post offers a review of Otto Penzler's Big Book of Christmas Mysteries.

Vicious crime at Christmastime?

Murder most foul as kiddies sing and sleigh bells ring?

Poison in the punch? Cyanide in the pudding?

Ye gods, what unspeakable horror!

But what fun, too, in “The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries,” Otto Penzler's collection of 59 notable Christmas crime stories of past and present!

Penzler, writer, publisher and proprietor of Manhattan’s Mysterious Bookshop, draws on his encyclopedic know­ledge of English-language crime fiction to give us a panoramic look at outstanding stories from the late 19th century to the early 21st. There are celebrated writers here — Thomas Hardy, John D. MacDonald, Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, Robert Louis Stevenson — and others undeservedly forgotten. Happily, the stories don’t offer much violence and gore; it’s mostly offstage. Indeed, one of the joys of the collection is how many are delightfully funny.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/book-review-big-book-of-christmas-mysteries-offers-yuletide-fun-and-crime/2013/12/15/4235a956-60e3-11e3-94ad-004fefa61ee6_story.html