A reissue of a classic (Golden Age era) cozy mystery. I didn’t particularly connect with it but it was interesting to see the genre’s roots.

First published in 1944, "Murder After Christmas" by Rupert Latimer is a delightful romp through murder, mince pies, and misdirection, making it a perfect addition to the holiday season's reading list. Latimer cleverly twists the tropes of Golden Age detective fiction, delivering a pacey and light-hearted narrative that captivates readers from the very beginning. With an introduction by CWA Diamond Dagger Award-winning author Martin Edwards, this classic mystery offers a festive blend of intrigue and wit.

The story revolves around the enigmatic Uncle Willie, a wealthy and formidable character whose untimely demise on Boxing Day morning sets the stage for a captivating murder mystery. Found dead in the snow, dressed as Santa Claus and seemingly poisoned by Christmas confectionery, Uncle Willie's death throws the Redpath household into chaos. As the police descend upon the scene, a motley crew of Willie's descendants, past lovers, and distant relatives becomes embroiled in a perplexing investigation.

Latimer weaves a tale that skillfully combines elements of humor, suspense, and classic detective fiction. The characters are richly drawn, each with their own motives and secrets, adding layers to the mystery. The author's narrative prowess is evident in the clever misdirection that keeps readers guessing until the final revelation.

"Murder After Christmas" is a testament to Latimer's ability to capture the essence of a bygone era while infusing it with a modern sense of wit and charm. The dialogue sparkles with the energy of the time, and the story is driven by the kind of banter that is characteristic of classic detective fiction.

In a world where a war rages on, Latimer manages to create a holiday-themed mystery that offers a delightful escape, blending the festive spirit with the intrigue of a whodunit. Fans of Golden Age detective fiction and those seeking a cozy yet compelling mystery for the holiday season will find "Murder After Christmas" to be a charming and engaging read. Rupert Latimer's ability to blend murder and merriment makes this novel a timeless contribution to the genre.

Thanks to Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Publishers for an advance copy for my honest review.

This one ended up not being for me. I was very confused on all the back and forth with the characters. It made following what was going on very difficult. I also wasn’t a fan of the detective. It was fun and festive but also a lot going on for me.

This was simply not funny enough for an actual parody and too silly for a proper crime novel. The book starts with a couple discussing the upcoming Christmas party and how there's always murders on Christmas parties and how if anybody is going to get murdered, it would surely be the rich family patriarch. The joke then gets dragged round as if it was Hector's corpse, with every single of the approximately 437624 characters constantly mentioning how the patriarch is really the most obvious hypothetical murder victim.

Though perhaps I shouldn't say 'mentioned'. Or 'say'. Because nobody simply fucking <i>says</i> anything in this book. They enquire, prophesize or murmur. If a plainer verb is used, it needs at least an adverb: people say reassuringly, ask anxiously, answer unemotionally or ask nervily and rhetorically because sometimes one adverb just isn't enough.
("But it is!", the author of this review sobbed emotionally, "sometimes you don't need one at all!", she added despairingly.)

Halfway through the book, the patriarch finally and surprisingly does kick the bucket, and it continues as before. With 4 1/2 jokes that get dragged out, and repeated over and over again with different words (so many different words! So many of them!) so that every last trace of humour gets lost in utter exhaustion.

What starts out like it'll be a cozy Christmas crime read (try saying that quickly), is actually quite snarky in tone, surprising to me at least for a book written in the 1940s.

Before the actual murder happens, chapters whizz by with all the characters making jokes about offing another character, as if it's nothing, they do this all the time and there's a war on, you know.

It's well written, but I thought the mystery itself gets kind of lost in all the back-and-forth.

Let me start with the good: it is always a pleasure to celebrate the efforts of Martin Edwards and the British Library Crime Classics series. For years, Edwards and the imprint have been unearthing, securing, and presenting several unjustly neglected, long out of print titles from mystery fiction’s Golden Age of Detection. (Poisoned Pen Press has made several of these UK books available to U.S. readers, as well as spotlighting classic American mystery authors in their own Library of Congress Crime Classics series.) So it is wonderful to see a book like 1944’s high-spirited holiday whodunit Murder after Christmas returning to print after being unavailable for decades.

We learn from Edwards’ useful introduction that Rupert Latimer was the pseudonym of Algernon Vernon Mills, an occasional stage actor who was plagued with health problems stemming from a childhood illness. Mills would die in 1953, less than a decade after the publication of Murder after Christmas, but retained a cheery perspective in those years that informed his wryly comic prose style.

In Christmas, Frank and Rhoda Redpath await the yuletide arrival of Rhoda’s rich and eccentric stepfather, Sir Willoughby Keene-Cotton, dubbed more ironically than affectionately “Uncle Willie”. The couple exchange winking ideas about how best to dispose of their relation to gain an inheritance, and as often happens in this type of story, Frank and Rhoda soon find themselves hosting other guests and relatives that could stand in the way of obtaining Uncle Willie’s legacy. When the designated victim finally meets his end – his body is found outside in the snow, lying beside a snowman that contained a box of chocolate as part of a holiday scavenger hunt – it is up to Superintendent Culley to interview the suspects, sort through the colorful clues, and make sense of it all.

I sincerely wish I had responded more favorably to Latimer’s prose, plotting, and characters. Other reviewers seem to have done so, from Kate at crossexaminingcrime, who enjoyed the book’s humour and characterizations, to Sarah over at On: Yorkshire Magazine, who found the book “charming and delightful”. My disappointment stems from the author’s handling of the genre’s three crucial elements: I found the prose forced and overwritten, the puzzle’s late-chapter twist telegraphed from the start, and the characters and investigation wearying over time.

And yet it shouldn’t be so. Latimer has worked hard to adopt a buoyant, comic worldview that should be inviting, not off-putting. And it’s very possible that this prose engages some readers; it just doesn’t cast the same spell over me. Instead, I find myself wading through the words, encountering phrases that often require a cerebral translation before I’m able to form a picture. Often it feels like the author is constructing his sentences and shaping his tableaux in an effort to display his very determined wit. Consider the passage below; to me, it feels too calculated and puckish to truly bring these characters to life.

The Coultards arrived first of all, with their two horrid little boys; then came the Howard Wortleys, with Esther Hobbs and three well-washed, adolescent evacuees. Rhoda tried to stir up these preliminary guests to be going on with, but they weren’t immediately mixable. The Coultards accepted the Wortleys as equals, but the Wortleys weren’t able to place the Coultards at all, having merely been told that he was a schoolmaster, which gave him no social status at all. Mrs. Coultard, well-dressed, stout, and cheery, bustled about helping Rhoda and calling her my dear (but in Scotch, which told one nothing), while Mr. Coultard referred to Frank and Howard as Sir (but in a cherubic and public-school sort of way, which told one even less).

Paragraph after paragraph, page after page – Murder after Christmas runs 350 pages, by the way – and this sheer volume of determined description becomes a weight. The author also never passes up an abstract adverb/adjective combination and often follows it with another dependent clause, adding ponderously to the sentence. Used sparingly, the indulgence wouldn’t add up to much, but as nearly every other dialogue line featured this addendum of overwriting, it became defeating for me. I give you one exhausting example: on a single page within Chapter 16, characters do not speak without having “explained firmly”, “ejaculated prefatorially”, “wheedled hastily, averting another gust of laughter”, and “appended cautiously, reviewing the episode and finding it mellowed with time; then hoiking his thoughts sternly back to present realities”.

I get it, you say (and rightly so). You don’t like his writing style. It’s not to your taste. So what else? As Martin Edwards and other reviewers note, Latimer’s references to British country life during wartime give the story a welcome angle of interest and lend an authentic anchor to an otherwise fantastical plotline. As a reader, though, it was frustrating to be able to guess the “twist” element and the underlying motive for the actions creating the “twist” almost as soon as poor Uncle Willie’s body is discovered. I claim no special perspicacity at all; indeed, I’m easily bamboozled by these things. But the author leads us there with the book’s title and then underlines the concept by having his characters discuss a certain pertinent issue again and again. At least Rupert Latimer cannot be accused of hiding clues or sidestepping fair play.

Such an early but strong suspicion of the solution meant that I felt consistently ahead of the ruminating Superintendent Culley, who pushes through 100 additional pages before arriving at the same conclusion. It gave me time to ponder another weakness in this lengthy mystery story: after Uncle Willie’s demise, Latimer never complicates his plot by adding another victim to the roster, thus injecting some energy into an otherwise flagging story. There is the offstage death of another relative – by natural causes or foul play? – and I did enjoy some of the singular clues, such as mince pies sown into a seat cushion and the disappearance of a detective novel called… Murder after Christmas. The story has potential, and at half its length and stripped of its jungle of prose it would be a fun seasonal read. Like those mince pies, I think it’s ultimately a matter of taste.

I received an advance reading copy of Murder after Christmas from NetGalley in exchange for an honest (perhaps too honest) review.

I found this book oddly hard to follow even before it got to the mystery - and then, whoo boy, the twists and turns just keep coming. Tongue-in-cheek and fun nevertheless, but somehow hard going for a short, silly, seasonal mystery. I do deeply appreciate the British Library Crime Classics giving me the chance to read lesser known mystery novels of the genre's Golden Age, but they can't all be winners.

Thank you to Poisoned Pen Press for the advance review copy!

Oh this was just superb, a perfect Christmas read and shall be added to my mystery collection for Christmas on the website. Loved the snarky observations as well.

I’ve read and enjoyed many of the mysteries in the Martin Edwards-edited British Library Crime Classics series, but “Murder After Christmas,” by Rupert Latimer, was not one of my favorites. There’s a madcap, almost farcical tone to the proceedings that, while amusing at first, soon became tedious, and the mystery’s solution was so convoluted that I almost completely lost interest in who actually did it and how. I could perhaps see this book adapted into a successful “Knives Out”-style film, but on paper it didn’t quite work for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for providing me with an ARC of this title in return for my honest review.

Uncle Willie is rich and old, and therefore would be much more useful to his greedy relatives dead than alive, if only they could be sure who he’d left his money to. Several of his relatives joke on a regular basis about murdering him. The Redpaths have reluctantly invited him to stay over Christmas and would be quite happy if he included them in his will. They’re not the only people who want Uncle Willie’s money though, and soon others are turning up to try to inveigle themselves into his good graces. And of course, Uncle Willie is indeed murdered – after Christmas.

Murder After Christmas is an odd book. It’s full of holiday cheer – Santa Claus, mince pies, snow, Christmas decorations, and food. It’s funny, even if the jokes get a bit repetitive, and the characters are eccentric to say the least. The plot is twisty and turny and people act in all kinds of odd ways. The plot might be a bit overcomplicated and over the top, but I enjoyed it. It’s a fun, lighthearted, Christmassy read.

When Uncle Willoughby Keene-Cotten comes to stay with the Redpath’s for Christmas all is not joyful and peaceful. Every member of the family has imagined how they would murder Uncle Willie and how they can get their hands on his money. So when he’s found dead in the snow on Boxing Day suspicions run rife, but is there even a murder to investigate? The book has a lovely typical Christmas village setting, cue chocolate box cottages, falling snow, Christmas parties and bickering families. With family and villagers coming out of the woodwork, Uncle Willie seems to be a very popular man. The crowing glory of this story is the the how and who dunnit! Amazing, a wonderful, unusual, confusing story of misdirected murder best described by Major Smythe “The whole things the most outrageous piece of irreverent buffoonery I’ve ever come across.” Another good book in the British Library Crime Classic collection.

When Sir Willoughby Keene-Cotton is found dead in the snow, dressed as Father Christmas, on boxing day at his step-daughters house, suspicions are raised that it may be foul play. He was immensely rich, and there are several people who could potentially benefit from his will, but who will depends on whether he died before or after Christmas. What follows is a twisty turny, madcap mystery that is highly entertaining, as long as you can suspend disbelief.

*Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion.*

I really enjoy the British Crime Classics, especially the holiday titles. This didn't disappoint! A great festive read for the holiday season.

Everybody wants "Uncle Willie" dead. In fact they talk openly about murdering him. So, when "Uncle Willie" is found dead on the day after boxing day no one is really surprised. Either "Uncle Willie" died of old age, he was almost 90 after all, or someone murdered him.

A Murder After Christmas was originally published in 1944 as part of the British Library Crime Classics series and reissued October 4th by @poisonedpenpress. This book was darkly comedic and even at 352 pages, I read through it very quickly.

I did have a bit of a hard time following all of the characters and their connection to one another, a character map would have been very helpful. Otherwise, this was such a fun murder mystery! Whodunit fans will love this one.

Murder After Christmas is a classic British mystery published originally in 1944. As such, the reader must be prepared to consider not only historical events, but the writing conventions of that period. The pacing is fast, the characters are many, and the conversations are, well, sometimes brutal. The book opens with characters who wish that Uncle Willie would die, and in fact speak flippantly of murder. If you are looking for likable characters or a cozy holiday feel, this may not be the book for you.
Should you prevail however you'll be treated to a fast paced script full of red herrings convoluted twists and comic conversations. In my mind, this book would be a perfect play. Actors bringing these quirky characters to life would very much enhance the story.
I found the book a bit repetitive at times, but was very pleased by the ending.
Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this ARC of the re-release of Murder After Christmas by Rupert Latimer.

After the initial pages, I found myself not connecting with the story or characters, so I decided to pass on this book. Did not finish

*The Odd Murder After Christmas*

↓ Similar Reading Experiences ↓
1. Francis Duncan’s Murder for Christmas (on my TBR!)
2. John Dickson Carr’s The Eight of Swords
3. Vincent Starrett’s Murder on “B” Deck

The Redpaths have always joked about how they might kill their insanely rich relative, good old Uncle Willie. When he is discovered dead the morning after their grand Christmas party, this humorous hypothetical game turns serious. From estranged relatives to relatives by marriage to secret relatives, this mystery is brilliantly unusual and filled to the brim with…oddly enough…mince pies before, during, and after Christmas.

I thoroughly enjoyed Murder After Christmas for so many reasons. As Golden Age detective fiction, the storyline is impressively plotted with twists, detours, and u-turns. Each character is seriously considered which, inevitably, leads Superintendent Culley to uncover more heinous clues that seem to push the solution even further out of reach. The cast of characters is rich with humorous activities and oddities. While the mystery itself was immensely compelling, I enjoyed most the moments in which the suspects baffled each other and Culley. He was unable to predict their movements and responses to his questioning and, in turn, nor were we able to predict these events as readers. The second world war setting added a fascinating scope to the Christmas setting, including the importance of rations and preserving energy sources. Such a complex mystery from all angles.

I laughed numerous times throughout this reading experience, both rooting for Culley and gleefully enjoying the moments in which his suspects stumped him again. My only feelings of disappointment come from knowing that this author is not a prolific one! Hilarious, unusual, and chaotic: exactly how I like my detective fiction! A perfect book for this Christmas season.

A really fun murder mystery, not only is a wealthy and old relative, who came to join the Christmas festivities is fond death in the snow in a Father Christmas suit, but we also find out he was poisoned. Lots of twist and turns in the discovery of the guilty party. Great classic crime mystery of the 1940's. Thanks you NetGalley and the publishers for the DRC

The problem with a mystery that is poorly written, such as this one, is that the plot becomes confusing. With a confusing plot that is also convoluted and that relies on a particular timeline for the solution, Murder after Christmas is just a mess of a novel.

The plot sounds promising enough, a rich old man is found frozen solid outside on December 27. Is it murder? if so, who did it and how?

Unhappily the book is so confusing that even after the death is solved I couldn't get it clear. This is the author's only detective novel and with good reason, it's poorly plotted and poorly written in what is a rare misstep for this otherwise excellent series.

Murder After Christmas is an irreverent classic murder mystery by Rupert Latimer curated by Martin Edwards. First published in 1944, this reformat and re-release by Poisoned Pen Press as part of the British Library Crime Classics series was published in Oct 2022. It's 352 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a lighthearted historical country house mystery set in 1944 England as the hostilities in Europe are blazing up in earnest. The author has peopled the scenes with a repulsive and irascible "uncle", a selection of characters of various backgrounds and levels of wealth, sprinkled in a murder, lots of secrets, and stirred well with murder the inevitable result.

It's banter filled but not always in a good way. It hearkens back to the days of witty repartee drawing room comedies of the stage. I honestly found much of the dialogue forced and found myself (after a while) reading the lines as if they were read by actors in a play in the plummiest of accents in my head, but it did nothing for the narrative as a whole.

The mystery, resolution, and denouement are fairly well constructed, if straightforward and heavily foreshadowed. It's the dialogue and relentlessly, almost frenetically, "witty" writing which I found wearying. I would recommend it to die-hard fans of period mysteries, but this book in particular won't be for all readers.

There are two standout aspects which elevated this well into "worthwhile read" for me.... first, that the author (whose life was tragically cut short) was absolutely hitherto unknown to me in any way which intrigued me, as I read boatloads of interwar and golden age British crime. The second aspect was that as always with the books in this series, the introduction and historical notes by mystery maven Martin Edwards was well worth the price of admission.

Three and a half stars. It's a very very light read and will entertain folks who enjoy golden age country house mysteries. I do highly recommend this series and Mr. Edwards' writing in general.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.