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.