Lee Allen's Blog - Posts Tagged "peter-swanson"

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A chilling festive mystery.

Ashley, studying in London, far from her Californian home, is invited by fellow student Emma to spend Christmas at her family home in the Cotswolds.

Ashley is thrilled, swept away by notions of romance and adventure in the picturesque countryside. But the recent death of a local girl finds Ashley faced with a mystery.

When she and Emma find themselves watched and pursued by a man in the woods, this Christmas takes a terrifying turn towards a confrontation with a killer.

'The Christmas Guest' is a novella by Peter Swanson, a festive mystery in the vein of classic crime fiction with a splash of gothic flare. Both genres are cornerstones of Christmas fiction, and Swanson delivers an enjoyable tale full of cosy darkness. We begin with our narrator in New York, going through old boxes and coming across an old diary.

Ashley's diary entries quickly pull us into a Christmas past, as we journey with this lonely young woman into the English countryside, exploring the vivid scenery of the old mansion and surrounding woodland and nearby village, feeling all of Ashley's hopes and dreams between the pages.

Some neat sleight-of-hand sets up a beautiful mid-story twist, while the finale reveals that, at heart, this is a ghost story, the shadows of the past forever haunting the present. It's exactly the type of story I love to read at Christmas - an immersive, haunting mystery, with some emotional moments and dashes of action and threat, making for a thrilling one-sitting read.



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