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.