This novel, whilst providing some fun for the festive season is hardly something that will rock your socks off, with one of its biggest problems being that the clichés ricochet off each other, and indeed everything else.
Daphne King, who runs the agony aunt column in a newspaper wants to make it onto the crime desk, and indeed she is seemingly good at it, with another reporter stealing her work, and even when running her column uncovering an abduction. Given a chance to stretch her legs somewhat, so she is asked to fill in for the theatre critic who was going to do an interview for the new production in the West End, A Christmas Carol, but has been taken ill. This new version of the play has been rubbished on its provincial tour, but will it go down well in London? There will certainly be a commotion, as one actor drops dead during a dress rehearsal seemingly of an illness, that is until Daphne soon discovers it was murder.
In and of itself the theatre has always been a good place to stage mysteries, as you have a group of people all wanting to be in the limelight and be accoladed, whilst keeping secrets closely guarded and indeed over the years there have been some great whodunits coming out of this setting – however this is most certainly not one of them. There are no real red herrings as such, and thus nothing is made that difficult for the intrepid Miss King. There is just the one red herring, and you would have to be pretty thick not to recognise this, and to be taken in by it. The main police investigator is so useless that surely not even in today’s world would he ever be in such a position, not even in the Met.
This is relatively fast paced, and I know will be great for some, who I would assume are coming to this type of mystery for the first time, because even if you have read a few you should know how they work and what is wrong with this one. It does also have to be mentioned that this does reach unbelievable heights in coincidences. We all know that such books are an artificial construct and there are certain things that need to be done to keep the reader interested in working out who the killer is, but this takes it a bit too far. This story could have been improved if there was a bit more thought gone into it, either to make it a good whodunit, or a good parody of the genre.
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