Gilbert M. Stack's Blog, page 21

Slashing Through the Snow by Jacqueline Frost

A Christmas Tree Farm Mystery 3 Slashing Through the Snow by Jacqueline Frost

Holly and her friends return for another Christmas mystery in Mistletoe. Three books ago, it had been forty years since there had been a murder in this town. Now it’s an annual event—almost, dare I say it, a rather perverse Christmas tradition. And like that first season of the classic cartoon, Scooby Doo, we now know exactly how the mystery will unfold. Someone hated by a huge number of people will be murdered. Someone close to Holly will be suspected of the crime. Holly will decide (against the pleading of her boyfriend the super competent sheriff who had been a top Boston Homicide Detective) to investigate. The killer will not like this and instead of simply killing Holly, will decide to leave several warning notes of various types which serve to prove that the wrong person is under suspicion (often already locked up) for the crime. Friends, family, and the sheriff will plead with Holly to stop investigating. She will ignore them—repeatedly. The villain will finally decide that Holly has to be permanently removed leading to a tense and violent ending.

 

So, heavily formulaic, but it works. The mysteries are pretty mysterious. And the growing cast of characters is very likeable. I suspect that if I had read these over three Christmases rather than one after the other, the formulaic nature would have been more like coming home to familiar surroundings than a cookie cutter mystery plot. Despite the formula, this one does have a surprise at the end, but I can’t reveal it without spoiling the novel.

 

'Twas the Knife before Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

‘Twas the Knife before Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

The second Christmas Tree Farm book is as good as the first. Holly’s best friend has an unfortunately public spat with a man her politically-minded parents set her up with and shortly thereafter he ends up dead. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he has one of the friend’s cooking knives in him. The evidence certainly seems to indicate that the friend is the killer, but Holly will not believe it and goes to work trying to prove she’s innocent. As in the last book, her efforts immediately receive pushback in the form of threatening notes—presumably from the real killer.

 

Somewhere between the first book and this one, Holly’s relationship with the sheriff went south and fixing it takes up a significant portion of the novel. (That also seems to be setting up a future storyline.) On the one hand, this was clearly an effort to let the two of them flirt again as they had in the first book, which was not a bad thing. But it also reinforces Holly’s inquisitive nature. He’s keeping secrets and Holly doesn’t know how to let a secret stay unexposed.

 

In addition to all the sleuthing, there’s the same warm and happy cast from the first book which makes this novel feel a lot like an old friend. These are happy books for the Christmas season and read in that spirit, you will enjoy them.

 

???Twas the Knife before Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

‘Twas the Knife before Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

The second Christmas Tree Farm book is as good as the first. Holly’s best friend has an unfortunately public spat with a man her politically-minded parents set her up with and shortly thereafter he ends up dead. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he has one of the friend’s cooking knives in him. The evidence certainly seems to indicate that the friend is the killer, but Holly will not believe it and goes to work trying to prove she’s innocent. As in the last book, her efforts immediately receive pushback in the form of threatening notes—presumably from the real killer.

 

Somewhere between the first book and this one, Holly’s relationship with the sheriff went south and fixing it takes up a significant portion of the novel. (That also seems to be setting up a future storyline.) On the one hand, this was clearly an effort to let the two of them flirt again as they had in the first book, which was not a bad thing. But it also reinforces Holly’s inquisitive nature. He’s keeping secrets and Holly doesn’t know how to let a secret stay unexposed.

 

In addition to all the sleuthing, there’s the same warm and happy cast from the first book which makes this novel feel a lot like an old friend. These are happy books for the Christmas season and read in that spirit, you will enjoy them.

 

Twelve Slays of Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

A Christmas Tree Farm Mystery 1 Twelve Slays of Christmas by Jacqueline Frost

This is a delightful Christmas time mystery with a sparkling cast of characters. The heroine, Holly, is instantly likeable. Dealing with a fiancé who dumped her a few days before their Christmas Eve wedding (and then can’t seem to understand why she doesn’t want to take him back), Holly has come home to her family Christmas tree farm just in time for a much disliked woman to be murdered on their property. Murder is generally a very bad thing, even when the victim is hated, but it is particularly bad for Holly’s family because A) her father is a suspect, and B) the cops close down their farm as a crime scene at the worst part of the year. So, Holly starts investigating and someone (someone besides the sheriff, that is) definitely doesn’t like it.

 

The romantic banter between Holly and the sheriff gives some additional warmth to the tale, as does Holly’s discomfort at the wannabe romantic attentions of an old high school class mate whose crush on her has just been rekindled. The mystery is enjoyable, but I think I liked even better the glimpse of life into this small town as Christmas approaches. Holly’s parents run an annual twelve-day event called the Reindeer Games that proves a fun and convenient opportunity to keep bringing the suspects together.

 

If you like Christmas and mysteries with just a light touch of romance, you’re certain to enjoy this book. My only complaint is the title makes it look more like a serial murderer than the more limited Who Done It that it is.

 

Sherlock Holmes and the Crimson Demon by James Lovegrove

Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon by James Lovegrove

Because James Lovegrove has written a trilogy of Sherlock Holmes stories in which the great detective encounters Cthulhu, it’s an open question going into this novel whether or not there will be a literal Christmas demon. This is not the Holmes of the Cthulhu books, but the traditional canonical detective. He is highly skeptical (to put it lightly) of anything smelling of the supernatural and this book has a lot of clues in it which require Holmes to hold his nose.

 

Overall, it reads like a pretty traditional Holmes novel. A young heiress has encountered a situation that seems to threaten her sanity, and if she loses her sanity, she also loses the fortune she’s about to come into. Her father doesn’t appear to be very sympathetic to her and is actually arranging circumstances that one could reasonably anticipate would disqualify her from her inheritance (which would give a third of it to his son). So, what is actually happening and how does the possible ghost of the girl’s mother who is alleged to have committed suicide a year before factor into things?

 

It's a fun mystery with a lot of things going on in it. I did not figure out the solution in advance, but was satisfied with Holmes’ account of the criminal acts. And seeing Sherlock Holmes overcome his inhibitions and embrace the Christmas spirit was nice too.

 

Zombie Elves Ate Santa Claus by Watt Morgan

Zombie Elves Ate Santa Claus by Watt Morgan

Here’s a story for people who like to mix their genres. You get a little Walking Dead together with some Christmas season—all without a lot of gore. The plot is very straightforward. Santa gets taken out in the first chapter of the story and his sled crashes into a suburban roof a couple of chapters later. In between, we get introduced to the mother and children who are going to try and survive this Christmas-time apocalypse. The rest of the story is about recognizing the threat—of course, zombie’s don’t exist—just ask the heroine’s ex-husband whose coming to pick up his kids for the holiday.

 

Overall, this is a quick and fun story fully deserving of a New Year’s Eve sequel. I’d actually like to know what triggered the problem at the North Pole, if Mrs. Claus is going to survive, and, what the heck happened to the reindeer?

 

Colony Three Mars by Gerald M. Kilby

Colony Three Mars by Gerald M. Kilby

This completes the opening trilogy of the Colony Mars series as corporations converge on Colony One to force the secret of immortality out of Jann. Jann doesn’t believe she has the secret of immortality. She has the secret to a plague, but more on that later.

 

With years to prepare, the Colony was not ready for the arrival of the various corporations with their military hardware and insistence that the clones aren’t really human so they can do anything they want to them. This is a big problem that really didn’t have to be. For example, the colony can manufacture explosives, so why didn’t they mine the heck out of the area surrounding the colony? They could also have made primitive artillery which would have threatened the landing ships. In short, with a few basic precautions, nothing that happens in this book would have had to happen. There would still have been drama, it would just have been drama with an intelligent group of heroes. Instead, they resort to a biological weapon—the plague made by the corporation that started the Mars colonies in its efforts to find the secret of immortality. Let’s be clear, the woman who has worried nonstop about the ethics of the plague uses it as a biological weapon instead of manufacturing a few explosives that would also have won the day.

 

And of course the colonists lose control of the plague and it gets back to earth starting a sort of a lightweight zombie apocalypse. I also didn’t feel that the ultimate solution to the trilogy was particularly convincing, although it does set the stage for future books. In summary, it seems to me that these books lost steam as the trilogy advanced.

 

Silent Night by Robert B. Parker and Helen Brann

Silent Night by Robert B. Parker and Helen Brann

Parker and Bran have created a Christmas Spenser adventure for what I think was the last Spenser novel Parker wrote. It’s not sappy, but the problem does fit the season. An unlicensed boy’s home is being pressured to shut down, presumably so that the property can be purchased and put to other uses. Spenser, and a somewhat reluctant Hawk, agree to protect the home. It’s a short but enjoyable mystery. I figured out both the villain and his motivation very early (which I don’t always do with Spenser novels) but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the novel.

 

The Christmas Spirit by Debbie Macomber

The Christmas Spirit by Debbie Macomber

Debbie Macomber appears to be the master of the Christmas story having a great many on her resume. This one is a cute “trading places” tale. Two old friends, one a minister and one a bartender, spend an evening telling the other one how easy his job is and end up deciding to prove each other wrong by trading places in the week before Christmas. Thrown into the tale are two women who are destined to become the romantic partners of both men. There are absolutely no surprises here. This is Hallmark romance all the way—a sweet and enjoyable tale.

 

So, while the minister-turned-bartender is trying to keep Hell’s Angels-like bikers from turning him into a human dartboard, the bartender-turned-minister is discovering that his friend does not have a one-hour-a-week on Sundays job. Again, nothing shocking in the story. There’s never any real sense of danger or threat—that isn’t the point. The point is that Christmas is coming, and a lot of people are feeling left out of it. At the same time, fresh perspectives let the two old friends solve some of the minor problems in each other’s lives.

 

The ending struck me as inspired by The Best Christmas Pageant Ever as, predicably, a lot goes wrong on Christmas Eve which weirdly enough makes a lot of things go right.

 

Steel Gray Eyes by Gilbert M. Stack

Steel Gray Eyes by Gilbert M. Stack

There are just three more days to pick up my new book Steel Gray Eyes at 99 cents. That's the pre-order deal. On December 19 it returns to its normal cover price of $2.99.

 

Steel Gray Eyes is the first book in a prequel trilogy to my Winterhaven series.

Before he became the greatest knight in Winterhaven, Willem, the future Lord Tavistock was a seventeen-year-old orphan determined to claim his father's patrimony. The only thing standing in his way was every greedy and faithless man in the honor. The only support he could find was his two teachers, his naked sword, and a pair of Steel Gray Eyes. This is the story of how Willem set out on the road to become the most respected man in the Duchy of Winterhaven.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Steel-Gray-Eye...