Reading mysterious around the holidays is very traditional and very fun; this book gives you several mysteries and each has it's own dose of intrigue and mystery. Each story in this collection is great!!

It took me a very long time to get through this one and it feels a bit anticlimactic to finish it outside of the Christmas season, but it’s a worthy collection even when read beyond the holiday season.

British Library Crime Classics generally does a really nice job with their selections, and while I don’t love Edwards as an author, I do think he does an excellent job as an Editor and Curator of collections like these .

To that end, this is a better selection than most because most of the stories are actually quite heavily Christmas themed as opposed to only tangentially relevant to the holiday, and because the selections seem to be based more on quality of the individual piece than whatever scraps could be obtained from the catalog of a big name author (though for the record, most of the authors here will be familiar to mystery readers).

The above seem to be unusual for these sorts of collections, so that was a pleasant, you might say, Surprise for Christmas. Ha.

The best of the collection was: the titular Surprise for Christmas, The Christmas Eve Ghost, and Give Me a Ring.

Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for this e-ARC. Unfortunately these stories did not work for me.

Such an enjoyable book. I am going to pull this one out every year around the holidays. Just a cozy collection of holiday stories that pair well with a warm blanket and some coffee.

Holiday and winter themed short stories. This is Martin Edward's (editor) newest collection for the British Library Crime Classics.
Vintage mystery crime stories. New to me author's, this was a good way to get an introduction to them.


I was given a complimentary copy of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

Delightful anthology of Christmas mysteries published by British Library Crime Classics. Martin Edwards' prologues to the British Library Crime Classics anthologies introduce modern readers to genre authors from the golden age of mysteries, many of whose novels have been long out of print. I love this series, from the wonderful art work of the covers to the short story selections included. I recommend this series to any fan of Christie or Sayers. What a great book to curl up with on a dark winter's night, mulled cider at hand and soft holiday music in the background.

Whoever says crime and Christmas don’t go together is just wrong. Long, dark nights. Stressful travel and strained families. Overworked retailers and overwrought children. Of course someone is going to snap, sooner or later. The more adventurous criminal might even use the busy season to distract from their dastardly activities. Editor Martin Edwards has put together a delightful selection of Yuletide crime stories, cheerful enough to put any reader into the holiday spirit.

My full review is here: https://www.mwgerard.com/review-a-surprise-for-christmas/

I have read a few other collections of this ilk, not as many as I would have liked. Just for my own logging needs, I had decided to list individual stories with their summary, what I thought of them etc. This takes some doing because I did not jot them down when I read them the first time. I had to peruse them faster and remind myself of my reactions based on the story itself. That is why this review is making an appearance now and not earlier in the year.
The Black Bag Left on the Doorstep - Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1893)
This was quite surprising for the year it was written in. I did not expect the kind of narrative that followed. I have not read any other books by the author and found the style quite different.
We have a woman detective being sent out to solve the puzzle of a robbery in a country home. It involves class distinctions knowledge of things we could not have, but the ending does not make the reader feel too bad about not putting the pieces together. (3 stars)

The Hole in the wall - GK Chesterton (1921)
This was a little longer than I would have liked. There is a lot of buildup with regards to the people assembled at a masquerade party. The story seems to be heading one way but ends up finding a more sensible solution as the ultimate conclusion.
The characters were given quirks as traits to keep them straight in the narrative, and it was not a bad story, with the atmosphere of the dark and icy night as a backdrop. (3 stars)

Death on the air - Ngaio Marsh (1937)
I felt like the title was one I had read from the author. I had found a few books by this author somewhere in 2012 before my use of Goodreads, so I cannot say for sure. That said, The story was new to me, and I did not expect the ending.
This is a closed room mystery where the tyrant of a home is found dead with strange markings on his fingers. There are many players in the narrative, family and family adjacent, who all felt the wrath of the head of the family and definitely wanted him dead. (4 stars)

Persons or Things Unknown - Carter Dickson (1938)
This was a slower story, with a cozy gathering deciding to embark on a ghost story. The story is of a maiden who is fated to have rivals for her hand, and one of them dies mysteriously. It is not as much a mystery as a closed room spooky story that has an interesting ending. I found it surprising and equally plausible! (3 stars)

Dead Man's hand - E.R.Punshon (1953)
This was my kind of story. It begins on a snowy night, and it takes a couple of paragraphs to figure out the current state of things. Once the norm is established, the rest of the story just flies past. It is not a mystery in any sense of the word. It does fit the location and season of the story, so my rating still stands (5 stars)

The Christmas Eve Ghost - Ernest Dudley (1948)
The story has a more traditional mystery beginning, more like the first one than any of the others. We have a worried woman approach a detective for advice. The ending was pretty obvious, and the setup reminded me of a Sherlock Holmes story I will not mention by name. Despite that, I did not dislike the case. (3 stars)

Dick Whittington's Cat - Victor Canning (1950)
In the beginning, with the 'cat' being a central plot point, I almost did not make any sense of the events on the page. Once that was clarified, I was a lot more interested in the story. It is not much of a mystery, but the pacing was was just right, and the reveal quite dramatic. Given how quickly things had moved, I would not have expected to be as tickled by the ending as I was. (4 stars)

A Surprise for Christmas - Cyril Hare (1959)
This was probably my favourite of the lot. Once again, not a mystery, so that may be saying something about what I like from such old narratives. It seems like an average Christmassy household until the husband and wife start to talk. Their conversation reveals something to us, and even before the ending came, I saw it coming. Despite this, I really liked the way the story unfolded. (5 stars)

On Christmas Day in the Morning - Margery Allingham (1950)
I received one of the author's reprints as my first (one of three) physical arcs. I found those short stories decent, but this was slightly more fun. The postman has been found dead, and his whereabouts before the event is very important to determine the next course of action. The mystery is solved in bits and pieces, and there is no way the readers could guess before we are told. It is an easy read in some ways, laying out the rest of the clues in an orderly fashion. (3 stars)

Give Me a Ring - Anthony Gilbert (1955)
This is more of a misadventure than a mystery. We begin with a woman stumbling onto the wrong lane in the fog and ending up in the crosshairs of a functioning gang. What happens next takes a lot of pages to get done. The actions of everyone involved was quite interesting, but I just wish it had been slightly shorter. (3 stars)

Father Christmas Comes to Orbins - Julian Symons (1963)
Once again, not a mystery but the different parts of a heist. The planning, the execution and the fallout. I have been watching old black and white movies of such scenarios on Netflix and really enjoyed them. This is along the same vein. The ending helped decide my rating. (3 stars)

The Turn-Again Bell - Barry Perowne (1959)
This is more of a family drama, and we see a certain sequence of events happen without a logical explanation. I guess, since we aren't made to look out for the answer, it could qualify as an actual mystery. (3 stars)

I liked this book better at second perusal and when thinking about it. Even with the individual rating, I give the whole collection a slightly better rating.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

A fun collection of vintage stories for those who like mysteries and taking a step back in time. I enjoyed the holiday themes. My favorite was “Death on the Air." I also appreciated that "The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep" featured a bright female detective! This book would make a great gif for next holiday season.

This was a fun read with the perfect blend of holiday and mystery.

This is an arthrology of holiday themed short stories with the perfect blend of mystery to make for the perfect holiday read!

The stories are short, fun, easy to read, and ADDICTIVE!

Highly recommend this super fun book to anyone looking for the epic mystery read to enjoy during the holidays.

The variety of authors and time periods offers a nice range of whodunnit styles for any reader. Placing these mysteries within the Christmas season did not require any author to sacrifice a clever twist or turn but adds to entertainment.

Another wonderful collection of mystery stories that are part of the British Library series of classic mysteries. i loved them all.

I received this book from the publisher through Netgalley for review and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
This series of books remain one of my personal favorites. The book features here is a fine example of holiday tales of mayhem and murder. When the holidays are busy and you have a few moments to curl up and read this is perfection! What I like about the short story collections in this series is the biographical and backlist information on each author. It helps when you enjoy a tale and want more from that particular author. Happy holidays and happy reading.

Thefts at the panto, old crimes uncovered with families together, shopping trips gone awry – this is the second I've read of the British Library's Christmas crime anthologies, and I was quite taken with the editor's frank admission in the foreword that he'd feared the cupboard might be bare. "Demand from readers was there – but what about the supply?" He also discusses the imprint's use of vintage railway posters in place of the original cover artwork, and a good thing too, because it's absolutely what led to my taking an interest in the range when I'm not that big a crime reader. Despite which, there was one story here I already knew, GK Chesterton's The Hole In The Wall, which despite not featuring his more famous detective who's actually a priest, still goes full bore on the performative Catholicism (though now I say that, was there any other kind for an early 20th century Englishman?). Sod it, though; I may be at odds with Gilbert on the merits of the world's biggest paedo ring, but I do share his distaste for lazy demystification, and the trick he pulls with etymology here still made me grin second time around.

If Father Brown is absent, we do get appearances by a couple of characters I know as the stars of series. Ngaio Marsh's Alleyn, so insistent that he has no imagination, stars in a story particularly rich in one of the big appeals of old genre fiction, the evocative detail of the time, like two-way adapters for sockets having once been illegal. Honestly, I'm looking down at a six-way splitter as I type this and feeling like Moriarty. Margery Allingham's Campion I had already encountered in the last of these volumes I read, and there I wasn't at all impressed, the case seeming to be solved by simple snobbery. Here, though, his tale is the delightfully eerie On Christmas Day In The Morning. And perhaps it was reading this in parallel with another BL anthology of festive ghost stories, but this was one of a few times where I felt a story here would have needed only the tiniest tweak to fit right in there. Ernest Dudley's The Christmas Eve Ghost has it out there in the title, and is a fairly straightforward Scooby-Doo sort of affair. But the 17th century rivalries and infernal rumours of Carter Dickson's Person Or Things Unknown are such close kin to Charlotte Riddell's ghost story A Strange Christmas Game that, were they not so clearly signposted by the collections in which they appear, it would take a Carnacki to know the crime story from the weird tale before the denouement. And then there's the longest and perhaps the grittiest story here, Anthony Gilbert's Give Me A Ring. It opens on a foggy Christmas Eve, with a shopping trip that happens past a strange little establishment whose window features, among various incongruous material, one fascinating ring – but one which, acquired by the wrong person, comes with terrible consequences. That's a perfect set-up for a curse, isn't it, even if here it's a strictly figurative one. The sense of the uncanny being deepened by the deeply wrong detail of the shopkeeper being called Mr Benn. And then it all goes prog when the policemen investigating are called Oldfield and Waters, though in truth they're fairly peripheral figures, the square-jawed and frankly quite dull hero finding more assistance from the dubious, ubiquitous lawyer Arthur Crook – "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to hear he's mixed up in this. One of these days he'll fall out of the skin of the Derby winner."

(Netgalley ARC)

A midtable entry in this series with one exceptionally long story that failed to capture the imagination and a few that I've read in other anthologies. That being said, this is always a solid seasonal read for me and I recommend it for mystery lovers looking for something to cozy up with on a winter night.

A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries is a nicely varied anthology of holiday crime curated by Martin Edwards and a part of the British Library Crime Classics series. Released 12th Oct 2021 by Poisoned Pen Press, it's 320 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

I enjoyed this collection of holiday themed stories which were originally published between 1933 and 1963. All of them are from very well known classic golden age British crime writers and are well selected and enjoyable. The classic authors are represented: Marsh, Carr, Allingham, Canning, and all the others (8 stories in toto) will be well familiar to fans of the British golden age.

The stories are a mixed bunch, but all were enjoyable and all were squarely in the 4 star range. I was unfamiliar with several of the actual stories, which was a nice bonus. Some are lesser known works by very well known creators.

For me, one of the biggest draws of the books in the crime classics series are the erudite and always interesting introductions by editor Martin Edwards. Mr. Edwards has a prodigious knowledge of the genre and writes engagingly and well.

Well written, this entry and the series as a whole are well worth seeking out. This would make a superlative selection for readers of the genre as well as an introduction to classic crime fiction from the golden age. It's so nice to see these being released for a new generation of fans.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Enjoyed a handful of the stories. I typically don’t really get into collections of stories like this one, but around the holidays I really them A great collection for what it is.

How does editor Martin Edwards do it? This is the fourth Christmas anthology I’ve read that he has compiled, and the quality remains pretty good! Are there some lesser entries? Of course; that will be true with any anthology. However, most are at least a good read. I especially enjoyed “The Death on the Air,” which featured Ngaio Marsh’s legendary Inspector Roderick Alleyn; Carter Dickson’s “Person or Persons Unknown,” Victor Canning’s “Dick Whittington’s Cat,” the clever “On Christmas Day in the Morning” by Margery Allingham, the novella-length “Father Christmas Comes to Orbins” by Julian Symons (which I’ve read before, but loved re-reading), and Barry Perowne’s poignant “The Turn-Again Bell.”

I’ll be checking out some longer works by some of the authors, as I didn’t get enough! In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press in exchange for an honest review.

A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries is a selection of classics of Anthologies or stories set around and during the Christmas holiday season. Elegant writings from many different authors showcasing the writing styles of Crime Classics and mysteries. Before each short or long stories Martin Edwards gives a short introduction of the author, including year of birth and death at times who they married; years that they were published along with the information about the short story. Recommended for readers who like to read mysteries and thrillers genre.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley for my honest review of the book. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own thoughts, feelings and viewpoints of the book.

This addition to the British Library Crime Classics series includes a variety of crime stories set at the holidays. These stories range from very short to quite lengthy. Each was carefully selected from the Golden Age of mysteries, and the book features both known and obscure authors of the time. Readers of mystery and crime fiction should find this a welcome addition to their holiday reading selections.

I received this book from the publisher and from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The opinions expressed here are entirely my own.