OK, I’m no snob about this stuff. I love me my Christmas mysteries, no matter how improbable or cozy. Give me a corpse in the snowman; a mystery which can be solved with a crossword; a heroine (not too many heroes in the Christmas mystery genre) who’s equally into cookies and cadavers; holiday salads with poinseietta, mistletoe and poison ingredients; and, most important, a case that’s closed by Christmas Eve, and I’m happy. If recipes are included, all the more charming. I used to have a collection of (mainly) vapid holiday reading, which strangely dissipated over time to just the few titles no one wanted to read, and, hey, it’s all good.
Except, perhaps, for this little stinker.
Honestly, even in a genre where you’re not exactly expecting psychological insight and moral depth, this was unbelievably shallow. Although some scenes, like a fire, and a few of the minor characters, like the retired librarian and one of the lobstermen, were compelling, the main character was more one-dimensional than a cookie cutout, her family plastic even by Ozzie and Harriet standards, the plot thin, and important questions unresolved. It did get better after the first 100 pages or so, but I’m not anxious to search out the rest of the extensive series, which makes even coastal Maine utterly unremarkable. This gives “lite” reading a bad name. Coal in Meier’s stocking.
