Festive fatalities
Some Christmas crimes from different times
The Christmas tree is up, the first windows of the Advent calendar have been opened, the Christmas cards are beginning to arrive, we’re starting to sing carols in church. And you know what this all means — it’s time to read some stories about people being murdered at Christmas.
I’ve recently read two very different crime books with the word “Christmas” in the title: a grim 1947 tale by Cledwyn Hughes, The Inn Closes for Christmas, and a lighter 2024 novella by Benjamin Stevenson, Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret. Different styles, different countries, different eras, different amounts of festive spirit — yet, both very enjoyable.
For Mrs Sterrill had been found dead.
How did she die?
It was all very interesting and rather terrible.
I picked up The Inn Closes for Christmas randomly from Bridgend Library, where the newly published Baskerville edition was part of the festive books display.1 As well as the striking cover, I was drawn to the name Cledwyn Hughes, which I recognised from the British Library collection Crimes of Cymru, where you’ll find his enjoyable 1959 short story “The Strong Room”. The Inn Closes for Christmas contains the novella of the title as well as six hyper-short stories. These latter tales are fairly insubstantial and uninteresting, but the main story is a darkly engaging read.
Cledwyn Hughes was a Welsh writer from Llansantffraid, Powys, which later became the hometown of Lol Crawley, director of the music video for the 2011 Chase and Status song “Blind Faith”. Cledwyn Hughes trained as a hospital pharmacist before turning to writing. He once explained this professional move thus: “Every pharmacist knows the satisfaction when an 8-ounce mixture is labelled, the bottle polished and the cork set square. Multiply that feeling tenfold and there is the beginning of the joy after creating a story, of seeing a new book gay in its dust jacket.”2 His output encompassed children’s literature, topography, novels and short stories. The Inn Closes for Christmas was originally published in 1947 in a joint volume with another short novel, The Different Drummer. In the US, it was given the title He Dared Not Look Behind. If you read the book, you’ll discover why the British title is perfect, and the US title a poor alternative.
Cledwyn Hughes introduces us to a bank manager, who has a Boxing Day tradition of opening a box file containing a bundle of papers related to the death of a dentist’s wife, Doreen Sterrill. One of these papers is the confession of her husband William, recounting his plan to terminate Doreen’s life. William has a completely unhinged motive — he’s become obsessively jealous of his wife’s prosthetic leg, and decides the only way to deal with his obsession is to kill his wife. “It was me or the leg. For she could not love us both.”
In some ways, the set-up follows in the Francis Iles tradition of inverted psychological mysteries. But Cledwyn Hughes takes us in a darker and more disturbing direction, as William Sterrill recounts his nightmarish visions of The Leg and we watch his descent into a kind of madness. The tale is told in a series of very short chapters, some only a handful of lines long, adding to the despairing sense of inexorability. It leads to a brilliantly grim final page where the reason for the book’s intriguing title is finally explained.
The Inn Closes for Christmas is a gripping psychological mix of crime and horror. There isn’t much subtlety in the storytelling, but the writing is very effective. If you want something to fill you with festive cheer, this is a book to be avoided. If you want something to give you a Christmassy chill, you can be thankful that Baskerville have brought this tale back to life for a new generation to enjoy.
Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
Some detectives, perhaps, solve crimes like fireworks: one lit fuse exploding everything at once. I solve crimes like a ten-car rear-ender on a bumper-to-bumper freeway: one car slams into another, and another and another, all the way up the line.
I was introduced to the writing of Benjamin Stevenson last year through his brilliant 2022 book Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone, the first investigative outing for accidental series detective Ernest Cunningham. At some point earlier this year, I picked up this shorter third instalment, Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret, and decided late November was the perfect time to open it. This book has a much stronger festive theme than The Inn Closes for Christmas, and is also a much lighter read.
Ernest Cunningham is drawn into this new case through his ex-wife Erin, who has been charged with murder. The victim is her new partner Lyle Pearse, and Erin literally has blood on her hands, but with no memory of how the blood appeared. The investigation moves to the theatre, where a magician and his entourage add to the suspects list. The Christmas backdrop permeates the whole story, though Cunningham has everything wrapped up (pun intended) before the big day itself.
As in Book 1, Ernest Cunningham is a playfully self-aware narrator. He is overtly insistent about playing by the rules of fictional detectives (“the detective cannot succeed by virtue of luck or coincidence”). He joyfully enumerates various mystery tropes (“if you don’t see a corpse, you can bet your bottom dollar that person’s coming back”). He gives you explicit spoilers in advance, but still makes them misleading. Where other authors hide clues in plain sight, Cunningham shines a spotlight on them. And he does it all with a wonderful dry humour, sprinkled with excellent one-liners (“I’d say he was the definition of ageing gracefully, if he wasn’t already dead.”)
With the plot, Benjamin Stevenson gives us a fair play mystery in the Golden Age puzzle tradition, but with an eccentric twist. The book is structured like an Advent Calendar, with 23 chapters revealing 23 clues, and the 24th window revealing the killer’s identity. It’s a ridiculous gimmick, but it’s the perfect conceit for Ernest Cunningham. Towards the end, we get a classic “challenge to the reader”, where we’re told that we now have “everything you need to, excuse the pun, take a stab at it.” In this case, Stevenson has helpfully itemised all of the key clues for us. And you’ll still probably fail to piece them all together.
This is another clever and fun mystery. Writing this review, I’ve enjoyed re-reading the opening pages and seeing how Stevenson starts playing with you as a reader from the very beginning. It also has a good festive atmosphere, so is perfect as a December read. I did find the final explanation a bit disappointing — the clues didn’t come together as satisfactorily as in Book 1. But it’s still a joyous book, and I’m definitely looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
Verdict: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)
What festive mysteries have you been enjoying recently? Let me know in the comments!
You can read about the new edition at The Bookseller here: https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/baskerville-snares-cledwyn-hughes-devilishly-macabre-novella-47-years-after-his-death
I had a very different idea when I read the title The Inn Closes at Christmas. Perhaps that's why they say not to judge a book by it's cover. 😁 I haven't read any of Benjamin Stevenson's books but am determined to read at least one before this year ends!