First Line (from Introduction): Reading this collection, you might get the impression that I don't like Christmas.

Once you begin reading these nine short stories, you will know that first line simply is not true. Steve Hockensmith loves Christmas, he loves writing about crime, and when he can combine the two, it's magic.

Sometimes when I see a book cover or a title, I just know that I'm going to love the book, and this is what happened to me with Naughty. The nine stories run the gamut of yuletide criminal activity, and you'll be hard pressed not to read the entire collection with a smile on your face.

"Fruitcake" is a grin-inducing tale about the love-crazed shenanigans of an old woman in a nursing home. A young woman hired as an elf in a shopping mall tells us how "I Killed Santa Claus." The guy in the office that we all love to hate has an interesting experience with his "Secret Santa." In "Humbug" we learn that Scrooge is dead. A gift wrapper in the mall decides to get even with a "Naughty" lecher. In perhaps the most touching of the tales, a little girl and her even younger brother find a gift in their mother's closet in "Hidden Gifts." There's a plot against Santa in "Red Christmas," and two dim-witted burglars attempt to rob a church on Christmas Eve in "Naiveté." The last tale, "Special Delivery," about a trucker trying to deliver a shipment of Cabbage Patch dolls in time for Christmas, struck a special chord with me, since I worked retail during that particular toy craze. Occasionally characters from one tale will appear in another, and you'll greet them with a smile and a "Hey, I know you!"

These stories are little marvels that induce smiles, laughs, tender feelings, personal memories-- everything that the holiday season is about. It's a bonus for all crime fiction fans that they also contain a little murder and mayhem. I urge you all to read these short stories, and-- when you do-- read every bit of them: acknowledgements, notes, dedications... every single solitary scrap. You see, Steve Hockensmith sprinkles joy and laughter throughout the entire collection, and I wouldn't want you to miss a single comma, dot, or dash. ( )

My blog post about this book is at this link. ( )

As the title suggests, the nine stories in Naughty all have a Christmas theme and involve a crime of some sort, and they are all also laced with a wicked sense of humor. And though a few characters – and a fruitcake – make appearances in more than one story, each stands on its own.

I enjoyed the entire collection from start to finish, but a few of the stories particularly stood out to me:

“Fruitcake” finds septuagenarian widow Ethel Queenan stalking the Always Sunny Trailer Park looking for a replacement for her dearly departed husband. Given that widows outnumber the widowers by about 5-to-1, competition is fierce. Ethel is therefore upset, murderously so, when virtual spring chicken (just sixty-five!) Connie Sandrelli swoops in and steals Ethel’s latest target out from under her. Evil plots involving fruitcake (recipe included) ensue.

“I Killed Santa Claus” is my second favorite of the collection. Poor Hannah Fox comes home for the final Christmas break of her college career only to find her mother has signed her up for elf duty at the mall’s annual Santa’s Workshop display. At first Hannah merely finds her co-workers annoying: fellow elf Arlo, the perpetual stoner; the mall’s Santa, who goes by “Big Buck” and has a very un-Santa Southern drawl; and Kev Kane, Big Buck’s miniature, elf sidekick. However, she soon begins to suspect Big Buck and Kev are up to no good and sets a trap for them…leading to some rather unexpected consequences.

“Special Delivery” is the tale of a Christmas that almost wasn’t for the children of one small town. It’s Christmas Eve in 1983 when long haul trucker Bass get a call that his services are urgently needed for an overnight run. When he’s told the insane amount of money he’ll be paid if he can get the shipment back by 10AM on Christmas morning Bass thinks surely he’s being enlisted to run guns or drugs. He’s told however that the cargo is much more precious – and valuable – than either of those. Bass will be running… Cabbage Patch Dolls. Yes, 600 of the might as well be made of gold toys are waiting to be picked up from a factory 500 miles away and delivered to the local Monkeyberry Toys in time for Christmas morning. Bass takes the job, but encounters some unexpected difficulty on the return trip that threatens to derail the Cabbage Patch express. “Special Delivery” is one of the more lighthearted tales in the bunch, and for those paying close attention also explains how Buck and Kev from “I Killed Santa Claus” ended up in Indiana to begin with.

“Naughty” sees the return of Hannah Fox from I “Killed Santa Claus.” One year post college graduation Hannah finds herself sill stuck in Indiana, though this Christmas season she’s graduated from elf duty to the gift wrapping station at the mall. When one of her customers makes extremely inappropriate advances, even going so far as to note that his wife is out of town and he does this all the time, Hannah decides that someone needs to “Grinch” the guy’s Christmas from him. She enlists stoner elf Arlo in a plan to relieve the lout of the expensive presents that, having wrapped them, Hannah knows are under his tree. Unfortunately Arlo brings two new people to the party, a duo known as Reptile and Diesel, whose lack of intelligence seems to be outweighed only by their extreme creepiness. Realizing this is not going to end well Hannah decides she wants to call the whole thing off, but Reptile and Diesel have other ideas.

“Red Christmas” is easily the most demented story in the bunch, and it’s also easily my favorite (’cause that’s just how I roll). Really, how can you not love a story that includes the murder of one of Santa’s elves (did you know elf blood smells like “gingerbread and peppermint and magic, with an undertone of paint and glue and sweat”), the kidnapping of Santa by KGB spies intent on overthrowing capitalism (for you young ‘uns out there, Google the term “Cold War”), a sword duel utilizing a soup ladle and candy cane as the weapons of choice, a bomb threat in Santa’s workshop, and the revelation that the reindeer on the B-Team have names such as Disco, Pac-Man, Yoda and Vader. Heck, there’s even a KISS reference slipped in at one point, and the dreaded fruitcake is back too, put to a most interesting use. “Red Christmas” is an incredibly enjoyable read, especially if you’ve had a glass or two of that special eggnog first.

Other stories include “Secret Santa” (presenting a rather Machiavellian twist on the age-old office tradition), “Humbug” (in which Inspector Bucket investigates the death of Ebenezer Scrooge, ingloriously flattened by a Christmas tree wagon), “Hidden Gifts” (by far the most serious story of the collection, it finds a very disillusioned young brother and sister searching for a reason to believe in the magic of the season again), and “Naivete” (featuring a reprise of Reptile and Diesel from “Naughty” in a seriously misguided plot to rob a church on Christmas Eve).

Every one of the stories in Naughty is top notch work, evidenced by the fact over the past 10 years all of them have previously been published in either Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock Mystery magazines. So why don’t you do something nice for yourself and get Naughty?

PS – Be sure to read the copyright page, which is just as funny as any of the stories in the collection. Yeah, the copyright page. Hockensmith’s that good. ( )

Naughty is a fun collection of Christmas themed crime stories and serves as a good way to start getting in a merry state of mind.
Among the highlights are "Humbug" about what was really going on in A Christmas Carol, "Red Christmas" about murder and mayhem at the North Pole, and his trilogy of stories about the not too bright criminal element of a small Indiana town.
Overall, a quick read well worth the $2.99 price tag. ( )