Recommendsday: Series at Christmas 2

Last year I did a post of Christmas-themed new releases in series, this year I thought I would do a follow up to a 2022 post and look at some of the not-new Christmas-themed entries in series. Does that make sense? They’re Christmas books, they’re in series, they’re not new releases and I didn’t mention them in that post year years ago. Boom.

Forbidden Fruit by Kerry Greenwood

I’m starting with Kerry Greenwood because she was one of the female authors we have lost this year that I really enjoyed reading. I reread the entire Corinna Chapman series after she died and Forbidden Fruit (which I read in June!) is the fifth (of seven) and the Christmas-set instalment.  Corinna is fairly agnostic about the season and portrays the exasperations and annoyances of it well – the shoppers drive her mad and the heat is oppressive. Instead of being able to relax she finds herself dealing with a reapeat offender runaway donkey and a host of minor inconveniences. On top of all this, her partner Daniel is investigating two teenage runaways, one of whom is very pregnant. Brigid and Manny are determined not to be found, and Daniel and Corinna find themselves dealing with a religious cult (and others) on the quest to help them.

The Dead of Winter by Nicola Upson

The Dead of Winter is the ninth in the Josephine Tey series, and another book I read in June this year (clearly a month for Christmas reading!) when I was filling in gaps in the series after they were all on offer. It’s 1938 and Josephine and Archie have been invited to spend Christmas on St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. In case you’re not familiar, this is a tidal island, and so when a murder happens it’s a closed group and Archie needs to solve the murder and keep the island’s residents safe from the killer. As always with this series, it’s darker than you expect and it’s a bit unusual for reasons that are spoilery, but it’s very much in the tradition of Golden Age mysteries as well as mixing real people and events with the fictional. I’m not gonig to say that this is the best place to start the series, but it is possible to read as a standalone and would give you a good sense of what the series is about.

Shakespeare’s Christmas by Charlaine Harris

This is the third in the Lily Bard series sees her heading away from Shakespeare for her sister’s Christmas wedding. As I said in my post about the series, Lily isn’t a cozy crime heroine – there’s too much darkness and trauma for that. And the mysteries can be pretty dark too – and this one is because it is the one where you learn the full scope of Lily’s backstory. And this is why I think it works quite well as a standalone – because Lily has a reason to snoop around in this but also because often the criticism of the series is that it’s dark and Lily isn’t likeable, but when you read this you understand why she always takes a pessimistic view on the world.

And I realise that the recommendations in this have got progressively darker, but sometimes you’ve already had enough saccharine and sugar at Christmas and you want a palate cleanser right? And if you do want something lighter, I have plenty of other Christmas posts for you including my recent Meg Langslow at Christmas, but also Classic Christmas mysteries and Christmas is All Around as well as the ones I linked at the top.

Happy Humpday!