The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021) by P. J. Fitzsimmons

Earlier this month I was in the mood for something light-hearted and fun to read, with a modicum of silliness thrown in too. I had already read the first book in the Anty Boisjoly series, The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020), back in April so I was confident that this sequel would fit the bill. It even had a Christmas setting to boot.

Synopsis

‘Anty Boisjoly tackles the strange case of a war hero who visits his old friends on Christmas morning — after being murdered on Christmas Eve.

In The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning, Wodehousian clubman, flaneur, idler and sleuth Anty Boisjoly pits his sardonic wits against another pair of impossible murders. This time, Anty Boisjoly’s Aunty Boisjoly is the only possible suspect when a murder victim stands his old friends a farewell drink at the local, hours after being murdered.’

Overall Thoughts

The humour begins from the very first sentences with Anty immediately plunged into a perplexing and disconcerting situation, the moment he arrives at his aunt’s home:

“Merry Christmas Anty Dear. There’s a dead body under the tree.”

… was very nearly the last thing I expected to hear upon arrival at my Aunty Boisjoly’s cosy, sixteen-bedroom burrow in snowy Hertfordshire.’

One of the things I like about this author’s writing style is that they are good at deploying interesting and less commonly used details to help you picture what a character is like. Anty uses the occasion of Christmas to reveal some aspects of his aunt’s character. For example, we are told that she was ‘not usually very clever at gift-giving. I still haven’t grown into the spats she gave me for my christening.’ Moreover, we learn there are some parts of Christmas that she is far from keen on:

“We don’t have a tree, Anty,” said Aunty. “I can’t bear to have strangers in the house, you know that. Instead, there’s a glass bauble on the rubber plant in the library.”

—

“I can’t bear the bang of Christmas crackers, Anty,” she said as I planted the Christmas kiss on the proffered cheek, “but in the spirit of the season I had Puckeridge cut some open. He’ll bring them with the port.”

The first two quotes are fed through the conversation Anty tries to have with his aunt about the corpse she has mentioned. and this makes things enjoyably baffling. After all, if she doesn’t keep a Christmas tree then where is the dead body that is meant to be under one? The fact that the aunt does not speak straightforwardly and that Anty at times is talking at cross purposes to her, does not make the opening difficult to understand and I actually liked how the narrative does not spell everything out and make everything obvious (an issue I have encountered a few times this year in my other modern crime reading.)

Fitzsimmons also does a good job when it comes to scene setting. Again, the choice of imagery is a key part of this. One example, which has stuck in my mind comes from the crime scene itself when Anty and the police examine it: ‘I had heard this bit, and so I wandered the room, although occupied as it was with furniture, Ivor, myself, and Mount Kimble, the effect was very much like a leisurely stroll in a crowded telephone box.’ The well-chosen imagery is also used in the way characters are described. For instance, when Anty is at the pub talking with Everett Trimble, he remarks that:

‘There was a jaunty, bouncy quality to Everett’s narrative, not unlike the sensation of being in a small boat in choppy seas. I found myself following his line of thinking like a harried Christmas shopper running alongside a Route Six to Oxford Circus, trying to hop aboard.’

What works well with this imagery is that it conjures up funny pictures within the readers’ mind, but it does not stand in the way of the reader making their own opinions about characters and the case at hand.

The setup for the murder is an interesting one. The victim bought everyone drinks at the pub at 11am, but Anty’s aunt saw the victim dead between 7:30 and 8am. The only footprints in the snow are his and Anty’s aunt’s. There is further circumstantial evidence against her too. Is she lying about when she went there? Or can Anty find another explanation for how a man can be simultaneously alive and dead? Nevertheless, things are not looking good for Anty’s aunt, as Inspector Ivor Wittersham thinks she is guilty and is all set to arrest her. Despite Anty’s success in the first book of the series, the inspector is still not overly cordial towards him:

“I know how it looks, Inspector, but we’ve found ourselves in this position before.”

“Once, yes,” admitted Ivor. “When you had the advantage of local knowledge and peculiar circumstances. But this … this is an old-fashioned motive and it’s old-fashioned police work that’s solved it.’

This passage reminded me of The Body in the Library (1942), as in that book one policeman remains sceptical about Miss Marple’s ability to help them, despite her success in solving the case in The Murder at the Vicarage (1930). He says, ‘That was a local case, that was, sir. The old lady knows everything that goes on in the village, that’s true enough. But she’ll be out of her depth here.’

In contrast to The Case of Canterfell Codicil, in The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning, there is less emphasis on the mechanics of the crime i.e. “the how it was done” and more focus on possible suspects, their motives, and secrets from the victim’s past. I thought I had solved the who/why, but I was completely wrong, as the writer successfully pushed my attention in the wrong direction. It seemed like a simpler mystery, but it was deceptively so. It is not until we get to everyone’s secrets that matters become much more complicated. Given the solution I can see why it is a more character driven/focused case. The only criticism I have about the mystery [spoiler put in ROT13 CODE] vf gung gur zbgvingvba oruvaq bar punenpgre vzcrefbangvat gur ivpgvz, jnf jrnx naq abg irel pbaivapvat. Guvf qbrf vzcnpg gur zlfgrel nf n jubyr nf guvf vzcrefbangvba jnf pehpvny gb gur cybg jbexvat.

However, this book was a fun mystery, and this is a series I hope to return to soon.

Rating: 4.25/5