Murder in the Falling Snow: Ten Classic Crime Stories (Vintage Murders)

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This series of books, being a collection of murder stories by well known authors, is a regular Christmas present for my wife. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

A quick and easy read - while some were interesting most we pretty mediocre, no real twists or turns, they seemed to get more lame as the book went on - the best stories being at the front of the book.

Off the Tile by Ianthe Jerrold - a good story that I came across in another anthology: Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries. It begins with the description of the cushy and immoral life of an international gigolo and ends with justice being dealt out on a cold, snowy Christmas Eve in freezing London. T. Meade and Robert Eustace - a very good story in which murder is suspected near a train tunnel in winter but the solution is completely natural. So bundle up, grab a glass of mulled wine, and get ready to be puzzled, astonished and entertained by these festive stories of murder and mayhem.

Some of the other stories are less good and I didn't really like the Father Brown story that's included at all. I also liked the Sayers story starring her lesser-known detective, commercial traveller Montague Egg, and the Sherlock Holmes story, though I'd read both of these before. This collection of short winter chills boasts tales from GK Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dorothy L Sayers and more. But for shivers down the spine, the opener Haunted House by Gladys Mitchell is well worth reading by candlelight before turning in on Christmas Eve.Sayers' Sleuths on the Scent has a classic scenario of weary travellers trapped by bad weather, this time in the bar of the Pig and Pewter. Austin Freeman - not a name I knew - whose 'Mr Ponting's Alibi' was long enough, like the Doyle and the Chesteton, to develop a neatly attentuated investigation by lawyer Thorndyke whose relations with the local detective, Superintendent Miller are similar to Holmes and Lestrade. I really enjoyed Mr Pontings Alibi by the latter, twistingly clever, designed to fox the reader and just great fun to read!

The stories don't have details of the dates when they were written or previously published, which is a shame.

In The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel by LT Meade and Robert Eustace, our narrator investigates the mysterious deaths of two signalmen on a remote section of the mountainous Welsh railway. Haunted House by Gladys Mitchell - in which a woman's murder on a snowy night in her supposed haunted house is resolved to be all too human. Ten short stories from the golden age of British crime fiction, not all of which involve murder and precious few of which play out against a backdrop of snow, either falling or settled. This is one of the shortest of these short stories (some are actually far too long-winded) and it's one where a thick blanket of snow is crucial to the solution of a murder mystery.