Dramatic Murder - Elizabeth Anthony

My Second nomination for reprint of the year, appropriately bought to you on the Winter solstice is Dramatic Murder - an aptly named mystery which I thoroughly enjoyed. I've read some mixed reviews for this but I'm very much a fan from the Scottish island setting the book opens with (however unlikely a name Posset island is) to the well-signposted ending back in London.

Dimpson McCabe, Dimpsie to his many friends has put together a Christmas house party in his Scottish castle, the last arrivals on Christmas Eve find him dead in the middle of his Christmas tree, apparently electrocuted whilst doing something with wires. How grateful we can all be for LED lights. It's a gruesome scene - and splendidly dramatic. 

The sheriff's court reluctantly turns in a verdict of accidental death, but both the police and some of the guests have their suspicions. Back in London meanwhile another member of the house party is found dead, and then another and another. It isn't the best plot (still more convincing than the last series of Shetland though) although the motive is sound and it's more or less believable - but then I don't think we're meant to take it too seriously. There's an almost pantomime element to proceedings that fits with the season and brings the Drama the title promises. 

With that in mind this book really isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if like me you don't want murders you have to take seriously its a lot of fun. The other thing that might be a dividing point is how unpleasant many of the characters are. Dimpsie may be a beloved friend, but he's also drawn as difficult, selfish, bitchy, and manipulative. If he wasn't a successful playwright, useful to know, well-connected, and very wealthy how many friends would he have had? 

Henry Walters, his secretary is insecure, greedy, and determined to make what profit he can from his deceased employer, it's only his sexuality (hard not to read Walters as gay) which is treated with something close to sympathy, and certainly without much comment for 1948. The women in the case are not much better - Holly the ingenue young actress with very short skating skirts making a dead set at a married producer gets to be delightfully spiteful and unpleasant in her private thoughts, Frederica, beautiful wife of the same producer is casually having affairs as they suit her and being thoroughly unpleasant to her Henry Brown, who wasn't always Henry Brown and isn't overly keen for his Jewish ancestry to be known about - and why would he want it to be in in the late 1930s.

I really enjoy a character that's allowed to be unpleasant and Elizabeth Anthony really delivers on this front, allowing her characters to be both awful and sympathetic at the same time. It's what really makes Dramatic Murder stand out - that and the Christmas tree electrocution - and what makes me want you to read it, and vote for it. 

Fear Stalks The Village - Ethel Lina White

I read this book back in May when I picked it up off the top of the nearest pile to be read (there are always piles to be read) and absolutely loved it. It's a slightly tongue-in-cheek examination of what is on the surface a picture-perfect village full of entirely admirable and apparently happily married gentry.

The architecture is a pleasing mix of Tudor, Queen Anne, and Georgian, there's no train line to bring day trippers, all of the old families have adequate private incomes. And yet can anything really be so perfect? No, it cannot; a poison pen letter is proof that something is rotten underneath that wholesome surface. There are rumours which cause a social distancing, more letters bring more fear as neighbours start to distrust each other, and it becomes clear everyone has secrets of their own to guard.

There are clear hints about the overall culprit early on in the book along with some splendid red herrings, but the point is to examine how a hint of blackmail and the pursuit of social power corrupts good people, and how the appearance of goodness matters more than the real thing for many. It's clever, amusing, and not very murdery and I highly recommend it for a lazy afternoon. 

It was my first and most obvious choice for reprint of the year too, not so much because I found the plot or the handling of it especially original, I’d say both are competent rather than brilliant, but because Ethel Lina White is masterly at setting up an atmosphere and getting her characters right, and more than anything she really understands fear and how it operates in this middle class domestic setting.

I wonder if this book also resonates with me so much is also because whilst men are caught up and become victims in this scenario, it’s really a book about the social power and standing of women in a world where they don’t have much other influence. The men, we feel, might forgive each other’s transgressions, the women will not even as they delight in the downfall of their peers. And more than that – even the social power these women have is mostly by permission of their menfolk as we see when the squire takes a dislike to a married woman because he flirted with her. The effects of his disapproval are economic as well as social.

If you have not read Ethal Lina White yet, get her in for the Christmas holiday, you will not regret it. Despite the summer setting this is an excellent winter read – that atmosphere of suspicion behind drawn curtains is just the thing for a dark winters night. 

Ottolenghi Advocaat

Efforts to get in the Christmas spirit have taken a literal turn today. My tree is up, shopping well do the way to completion, and I've made my own Advocaat using a recipe from Ottolenghi's Instagram - which I think is properly attributed to Verena Lochmuller who co-authored the latest cookbook (Comfort) and seems fabulous. 

I've never really been an advocate woman - Snowballs were the Christmas cocktail you'd be offered in my teens but I wanted to seem sophisticated so avoided sweet creamy drinks in favour of hard spirits and dry sherry - which I liked a lot and still do, but sophistication continues to elude me. 

Verena's Advocaat is very similar to Whipkül which in turn has a lot to do with egg nog. There's nothing more luxurious in the depths of winter than something rich with cream and egg yolks, warm with spirits, and sweet with sugar. She promises that it will be stable in the fridge for about 2 months, I think to be safe I'd like to drink it faster.

The recipe and method is simple. Take 12 egg yolks (better plan on making a lot of White Ladies or a huge meringue with the leftover whites) and lightly beat them with 500g of icing sugar - do not let the sugar sit in the yolks for long as it makes them hard. Add the scraped innards of a Vanilla pod, pour in and mix 300ml of double cream, and finally 500ml of alcohol Don't over whip either as the air will work it's way out and leave gaps at the top of your bottles. 

Alcohol wise you could use vodka, white rum, golden rum, or brandy. My preference was for a golden rum for the flavour, white rum or vodka would have been cheaper, but if price was my main concern I'd have just bought a bottle of Warninks. Pour into a large jug through a fine mesh sieve to catch any bits and then decant into sterile bottles or jar. Keep in the fridge and use within 2 months. Have a look at the original insta post from Verena or Ottolenghi for a couple of serving suggestions. 

These quantities made about 1.3 litres of alcoholic custard - it would be easy, and sensible to half them. My plan is to give half away instead 

A Book For Christmas - Selma Lagerlöf

I haven't really been feeling particularly Christmasy so far - and yes I know it's still early, but this preparatory part of the season is the bit I normally enjoy. December has so far been a blur, work has been hard (hit by IT issues) and I've been too tired to really do much more than sleep when I get home. Tonight though my mother battled through awful traffic and worse weather to help me get a tree - it took us almost an hour to get barely a mile and back. Mum is worried that I'll be disappointed with the admittedly lopsided tree we found at the first shop we went to, but it was not an evening to traipse around garden centres, supermarkets, or DIY shops in the hopes of finding something better. 

The lopsided bit is facing the corner of the room and doesn't much matter, the rest of the tree is a nice shape, it was a very acceptable price, and I think it has character. I've started candying oranges, think I'll make biscuits at the weekend, started work on a Christmas stocking, have my first card up, and finished A Book For Christmas last night - so I'm slowly getting there.

I bought this mostly because Penguin sent some really lovely promotional material into the shop with it, it was enough to make me look and that was enough to make me buy. Promotional material works. I wasn't familiar with Lagerlöf but the mood isn't far from Hans Christian Anderson - veering dark and with a strong Christian moral. I'd say it's a collection of 2 halves - the first 4 stories I really liked, the last 4 not so much. A Book For Christmas opens the collection and is charming, The Legend of St. Lucia's Day is lengthy and old fashioned but satisfying. The Princess of Babylon and the Rat Trap both hold the balance between entertainment and moral in a way that works for a modern reader.

Redbreast did not work so well for me - too much of a Sunday school feel to it, and perhaps the same for In Nazareth, although the end to that has a kick to it that lifts it a little. The Skull is an interesting mix of Gothic horror and Christian homily that sit uneasily together in my mind, and the same with the Animals' New Year Night. 

What I do like about all of these stories is the old-fashioned sense of real danger from the weather, from poverty, from starvation, and from violence. On a day I saw an advert for a children's book called Krampus' Bad Fur Day I'm feeling a need for some dark to flavour the cosiness of the season. 

Murder by Candlelight - selected by Cecily Gayford

Why yes, I did actually buckle down and finally finishing a pile of half read books this weekend, and I'm continuing the good work into the week - it's a nice feeling to see the pile by my bed diminish to slightly more manageable proportions. 

I bought Murder by Candlelight, this year's Christmas crime collection from Profile in the Carlisle Waterstones when I had an hour to spare between my bus south from the Birders and the train further south. I don't know Carlisle at all well, but it's a good sort of place to have a bit of time between trains - the town centre is an easy walk, even with luggage, in pursuit of a hot coffee, decent sandwich, and emergency reading. This book turned out to be inspired choice for the journey.

There are three train stories in it and they all take place on the line that runs from Carlisle to Birmingham. I started reading with the Dorothy L. Sayers story as I left Carlisle to find that the characters were also on a train leaving Carlisle (they got off at Rugby, I only went as far as Birmingham). It's a better story than a lot of Sayers shorts I've read. By chance as I changed trains at New Street I picked Cyril Hare's It Takes Two - the denouement takes place in New Street. Further investigation revealed Freeman Wills Crofts The Mystery of the Sleeping-Car Express where bad things happen near Preston. The worst thing that has ever happened to me at Preston was a rail replacement bus service pre-lockdown. 

Fortunately, this last set of train journeys was entirely trouble free, everything ran on time, there was no problem getting seats and I had lots of reading time to enjoy a few murders in. Murder by Candlelight is the strongest collection I've read from Profile. there isn't a dud in it, and Cyril Hare's It Takes Two was a particular gem. Simon Brett's 'How's Your Mother' is another one - it runs close to humour until just before the end when it veers into something altogether more unsettling. I think it's from 1985s 'A Box of Tricks', and owes a good bit to Physcho. 

A really satisfactory collection of mysteries and an excellent stocking filler of a book. 

The Dead of Winter - Sarah Clegg

I have an advance review copy of this book with a cover I actually like more than the finished hardback which is saving me from buying the finished hardback - something I'm rarely tempted to do, but I loved this book so much that I'd make an exception for it. 

The Dead of Winter is a survey of the Demons, Witches, and Ghosts of Christmas and it is an absolute delight - another easy entry into my top ten books of the year list when the time comes to put that together. Sarah Clegg is a knowledgable, academically sound, and overall amusing guide to the darker side of Christmas and where it comes from. 

The answers may be surprising depending on what you already know, or think you know, about Christmas traditions. The short version is that some things - like carnival have roots going back to antiquity, and some traditions are only a few hundred years old. We had mostly moved away from the darker side of the festive season, but the growing popularity of wassailing, Krampus runs, mummers plays and the Mari Llwyd snapping horse heads suggest we need something to balance the jollines of Santa and the saccharine effects of the John Lewis Christmas advert. Or maybe that as Christmas has increasingly become about children, we're looking for some more adult traditions to embrace.

Whatever theories you favour there's plenty to think about here. Clegg never mocks the eccentricities she meets - which might have been tempting for the winter solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, she does invite us to laugh with her at how she manages to scare herself on a pre-dawn Year Walk in an attempt to discover who in the parish will die in the next year. She doesn't believe in the possibility, but on a cold Christmas eve morning well before sunrise having observed the whole ritual - well then it's hard not to believe just a little in anything at all. 

This isn't a particularly dark book and certainly not a how to guide for dark rituals, but very much a survey of recorded folklore and how it's evolved. Exactly the thing to settle down with on a dark night and make you wonder if it's worth leaving out an offering of food and an open window on the 13th of December in the hope of being taken up by Saint Lucy's wild hunt and riding across the winter sky with her. 

Nights Out At Home - Jay Rayner

I've always enjoyed Jay Rayner's restaurant reviews so was happy to accept a review copy of this book, expecting to enjoy it. I'm still surprised by how much I love it. It's an easy book to dip in and out of, though once you start reading it's even easier to just carry on. Rayner, I imagine, must be an engaging host or dinner companion; amusing and generous with his knowledge, serious about what he does but not taking himself too seriously here, and delightfully enthusiastic about the the food that has hit the spot. 

Nights Out at Home is a collection of 60 recipes and all sorts of stories from 25 years as a restaurant critic and perfect for any foodie that likes to try and recreate a good meal out back at home. Some of the dishes in here are complicated, but they'll make you a better cook (and so will having a good look at some of the carefully chosen restaurant menus) some are perfect in their simplicity, and one sets out to create a luxuriously home made version of the Gregg's steak bake - an endeavor that so strongly reminded me of someone I used to work with (an amazing cook) that I'll be sending him a copy of this. 

We don't sell as many cookbooks as I'd like in Leicester, and Amazons ratings have this at number 10 in women's biographies which is impressive but confusing. My overall feeling though is that it's not quite getting the attention it deserves. As a practical cookbook it wouldn't be my first choice, but as a really enjoyable read with insight into the role of a restaurant critic, professional kitchens, and the people who run and work in them it's a treat. 

It would make an excellent Christmas present, not least because it's going to be perfect reading both in anticipation of Christmas lunch or dinner, and then on a full stomach whilst it all digests. I've had a thoroughly lovely weekend reading it in between pottering around cooking a little more elaborately than I have in a while - bad weather blew out our plans for a good country walk followed by a pub lunch so we went all out at home. Which is another thing to like about this book - its enthusiasm for other cooks and their work is inspiring me to pull down a couple of so far underused books and give them more attention too. 

Murder under the Mistletoe - The Reverend Richard Coles

I started reading Richard Coles first murder mystery (Murder Before Evensong) in proof form just before it first came out, but only read the first few chapters before getting distracted by other books. Since then he had joined the list of things people keep telling me I would love to the point that I stubbornly refuse to read them. Yesterday I got a copy of 'Murder Under the Mistletoe' read it in a sitting and have to concede that everybody who told me I'd love him was on the money. 

This is the beauty of a short book (around 140 pages in this instance with an excellent recipe for bread sauce thrown in). It's not a big thing to invest the time in it, and as 'Murder Under the Mistletoe' charmed on a number of levels I will be going back and starting from the beginning. 

I liked it as a murder mystery, it's clever with a great ending which I can't discuss without spoilers but I thought it was satisfyingly nuanced. I like the Clements, Canon Daniel Clement is thoughtful, human, clever, and compassionate - there's a satisfying scene where he immediately stops some mild bullying. His mother Audrey is a splendid creation and so is brother Theo. The de Floures family from the big house are well drawn too, and Mrs March is a masterpiece.

I really liked the attention to food and drink, and the obvious knowledge behind it - I wonder if the Reverend would appreciate that I'm writing this with an excellent glass of 2011 Côte-Rôtie to hand (I'm certainly appreciating it) or that he inspired me to cook venison tonight... 

More than anything though I love how this reminds me of E M Delafield's Provincial Lady. Coles has set his books in the late 1980s - a nice touch. For anyone middle aged now it's long enough go for a touch of nostalgia, but not so far back as to need much explaining, I dated it from David and Ruth Archer's wedding. It's another smart touch from a smart writer. Mobile phones and the the internet are not conducive to convincing cosy crime, the 80s still feel familiar to many of us, there's no need to over-explain anything but there are a few plot details that wouldn't work in a contemporary setting, including perhaps some of the social nuance.

The Clements are solidly middle class, Audrey, Daniels mothers, attempts to impress the local gentry are treated with humour and sympathy - there's a lovely passage where Daniel worries if the de Floures, who have invited themselves for Christmas dinner will be stilton scoop or knife people. I do not like stilton, but I do have a scoop, and have given a few as presents*. The nuance is continued through wine choices - German Sekt rather than Champagne - not as popular as it was, croft original sherry, a white Burgandy bought as a gift from the big house that will be nice, but isn't the best, at a time when the best was more affordable. There are dozens of moments like this and they're as sharp and delightful as I could hope for. 

*A benefit of living in the home county of Stilton is that if you do like it and are sensible enough to go to the market here you get excellent Stilton for about a third of the price of supermarkets or cheesemongers. Having a whole wheel of it on the table is a question of having enough people to eat it, not needing a bank loan to buy it and scooping os very much an option. 

The Wood at Midwinter - Susanna Clarke

This is a very pretty book but it has - not exactly annoyed me, but it's not to my mind pretty enough to warrant the £9.99 price tag, and there isn't enough story to justify it either. It is not a good sign when an explanation of what you've just read takes almost as long as the story it explains, non of which is a reflection on Clarke's writing which is as perfectly crafted as ever. 

Victoria Sawdon's illustrations are charming enough but you'd have to like them a lot more than I do to buy the book for them (my copy is a review one from Bloomsbury, which I'll pass on to a hopefully more enthusiastic colleague). I liked 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell' but (ironically given how short this is) thought it was over long - The Woods at Midwinter is imagined in the same world, it is very much for fans of both Clarke and 'Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell'. 

This would have worked beautifully as an add on in an exclusive edition, and as it stands will probably find itself in any number of Christmas stockings (or equivalent, we're a stocking family for this kind of thing), there will be people who love it, are entranced by the images, and feel very happy with their purchase, but I'm in a full on Scrooge mood with this one to the point that I've deleted several mean spirited sentences, but in the end I can't even bring myself to really be down on the publisher for producing it. What I do know is that it's bothered me enough to write this to get it off my chest.

The Kings's Bride - E.T.A. Hoffmann

How do you catagorise E.T.A Hoffman? Romantic, surreal, magical realism, gothic, horror? I'm not really sure, I think he's mostly files under fiction which tells the reader nothing. Perhaps influential is the word that really sums him up - a writer who's work and imagination still permeates popular culture but there's a good chance you've never heard of (I think anyone reading this will have heard of him, but we're a select group).

The King's Bride is at the lighter end of Hoffmann's output - mostly a comedy with some excellent jokes and only a few horrifying moments. Anna is happily engaged to her neighbours son, Amandus, currently at university and fancying himself a poet whilst she remains at home and concerns herself with the kitchen garden. Her father, something of a philosopher, astronomist, and astrologer, spends his days studying the sciences from the comfort of his tower. 

One day Anna discovers a gold ring on a carrot in her garden, puts it on and finds herself engaged to Corduanspitz - a gnome, or possibly the king of carrots, which is a much worse thing to be than a gnome. Anna is at first horrified, and then reconciled as she's led to believe she will reign over the finest vegetable garden in the world, and then horrified again as she realises she's being changed into something more like her prospective husband. Will Amandus forget his poetry for long enough to save the day and his true love? Will her father maybe manage it instead? Or will Corduanspitz win out and carry Anna away, and what of his feud with the radishes?

In the spirit of any romance worth the name there's a happy outcome for Anna, and plenty of amusement for the reader - the portrait of Amandus as an undergraduate over confident in his own abilities as a poet is an absolute treat, and there's more than enough unease behind the comedy to make things interesting. 

This translation is part of Alma Classics 101 page classics series - a genius concept. It's not so much that my concentration is shot for long books (it is slightly) but that middle age has tired me out. I don't currently have the energy to read as much as I'd like to, or the time (because I fall asleep). Novellas are satisfying, they're also a fabulous way to test the waters before investing in a major work by a classic novelist, or as the season closes in on us, a really good small gift for Christmas.