A Christmas Tragedy - 2/5
By The Sword - 4/5
The Christmas Card Crime - 3/5
The Motive - 2/5
Blind Man's Hood - 3.5/5
Paul Temple's White Christmas - 2/5
Sister Bessie or Your Old Leech - 2/5
A Bit of Wire-Pulling - 2/5
Pattern of Revenge - 3/5
Crime at Lark Cottage - 2/5
Twixt the Cup and the Lip - 2/5 ( )

Thoroughly enjoyable collection of 11 short stories all set during Christmas period. And all originally appeared in print sometime between 1909 and 1965. ( )

The Christmas Card Crime: and other stories - edited byM.Edwards
Audio performance by Gordan Griffen and Anne Dover
3 stars

Overall, this was a very satisfying anthology of short stories from the British Library’s series of Crime Classics. Each story has introductory information about the author and the publication history. Some of the stories were originally published only in magazines before being ‘rediscovered’ for this collection. As far as I remember they were all written from the early to mid 20th century. As is usual with an anthology, I liked some stories more than others. This was a good mix of suspense, horror, puzzle, and spooky mysteries. It provided perfect short entertainment breaks while I did holiday chores.

This book was available for checkout from Hoopla in audio and ebook format. I’ll be looking for other titles in this series. The cover art on these books is so beautiful, I am tempted to look for paper editions to have on my shelves. ( )

The third British Library Crime Classics seasonal collection (after Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries and Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries), this collection contains 11 stories as opposed to the usual 14 or 15. This allows for longer stories that feel more complete, which was definitely a plus to me. Not all of the stories included are super long; there are a couple of less than 10 pagers from authors who don't normally use the short form, like ECR Lorac and John Bude, so there's some variety.

My favorites from this collection are:

[+] "By the Sword" by Selwyn Jepson (1930)
[+] the titular story "The Christmas Card Crime" by Donald Stewart (1934)
[+] "A Bit of Wire-Pulling" by ECR Lorac (1950)
[+] "'Twixt the Cup and the Lip" by Julian Symons (1965)

Interestingly, only two of the included stories in this collection contain series characters. Of those two, only one was hard for me to get into (the Paul Temple short), because it's basically a vignette and we're dropped into the middle of the character's life. If you have no familiarity with said character (as I didn't) it's a little confusing.

All in all, these holiday collections have gotten better and better with each passing year. I'm looking forward to the next! ( )

Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss. ( )