End of year reading…

I did read two of my Christmas books after all. But the bulk of the Christmas mysteries will have go back on the shelf for next year. Like everyone else, now I’m ready for a new year and new reading.

A Highland Christmas by M.C. Beaton

M.C. Beaton wrote my favorite Agatha Raisin cozy mystery series, but I’d never read any of this series featuring Hamish MacBeth. M.C. Beaton (aka Marion Gibbons) died in 2019 and is most famously know for these two mystery series. In this short novel, Hamish’s family has abandoned him for Floridian warmth, so he is left alone for Christmas.

At first it felt a bit un-Christmassy with no-one but Hamish having any Christmas spirit and I was about to put it to one side. But I persevered & was so glad I did, because it turns into a enjoyable feel-good Christmas tale.

There are no murders in this one — there is a lost cat, stolen Christmas lights and figuring out what made the grumpy old women into the witch everyone thinks she is — not to mention putting on a Christmas concert for the local old people’s home all while trying to sort out his love life.

A simple story with good characters, lovely settings, and holiday atmosphere.

Jane and the Twelve Days of Christmas by Stephanie Barron

I started this series when it first debuted back in 1996 (beginning with Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor). The series re-imagines Jane Austen as amateur detective. I read the first three and then decided I would rather read (and re-read) the actual Jane Austen novels.

This one being set at Christmas got saved for a rainy holiday season and we’ve had just that — so I dipped in.

The tale opens on Christmas Eve, 1814, as Jane Austen; her sister, Cassandra; and her mother are traveling to spend the Christmas season with her brother James and his family. James is now the rector of Steventon, where Jane grew up, so this is also a journey of return to her childhood home and neighborhood. As they gather to enjoy the twelve days of Christmas together, there is much to celebrate: Mansfield Park is selling nicely; Napoleon has been banished; British forces have seized Washington, DC; and on Christmas Eve, John Quincy Adams signs the Treaty of Ghent, which will end a war nobody in England really wanted.

It won’t spoil anything to tell you that Jane is involved in two somewhat convoluted murders and then searches down a spy who is attempting to aid Napoleon in his war against England. Also, fair warning, like Jane Austen’s books themselves, there are multiple characters, often with the same first names, and complicated familial relations. (I have a little book I found in a used bookstore called Who’s Who in Jane Austen and the Brontes which is invaluable when reading either Austen or Bronte, and now sadly out of print.)

The Austen’s and friends know how to celebrate the holiday season — there are lavish descriptions of food, festivities and dress. But also some bleak accounting of the cold, damp houses, as well as the varying impacts of societal class and wealth.

I had forgotten the delight in Ms. Barron’s writing which deftly captures the style and wit of Austen, as well Regency manners and a true ear for Austen’s dialect. The author painstakingly sifted through Austen’s letters and writings, as well as extensive biographical information, to create a finely detailed portrait of Austen’s life—with a dash of fictional murder.

Jane and the 12 Days of Christmas can be read as a standalone; but you do need to know that the gimmick of the series is a collection of Jane Austen’s personal journals have been discovered (imagined) which tell of her involvement in solving a number of murder mysteries.

As one reviewer said: this series imagines Jane Austen as she might have been in the world of death by murder and intrigue, as opposed to death by boredom.

A digital review copy was kindly provided by Soho Crime via NetGalley.

Now it’s time for a brand new year – please, oh yes please?

I don’t know about any of you, but I’m planning to go to bed early tonight I’m tired – really tired of 2020.