Murder for Christmas?

by guest blogger Krista Davis


Some people might think it’s peculiar to write about a murder that takes place around the holidays. After all, it’s the hap-hap-happiest time of year. I love Christmas. The decorating, and shopping, and baking -- the whole thing. I even like stringing lights outside with fingers stiff from the cold. I look forward to feasting on roast goose with friends and family and curling up by the fireplace with hot chocolate and a good mystery.



As we grow up the joys and disappointments of the holidays no longer come from the packages under the tree. They move up to a bigger and less predictable source, the behavior of our families and friends. We look forward to the warmth and pleasures of family, but we dread dealing with the mother who drinks too much or the husband who is having an affair. Competent, respected adults shudder at the thought of the holidays with a parent so critical that they’re reduced to insecure, angry adolescents again. How does one cope with a parent who says not to come home unless the daughter has lost weight?



Earlier this year I was walking along a street in Charlottesville, Virginia with Liz Zelvin. She told me (and I hope I’m paraphrasing you correctly, Liz) that one of the first things her clients have to learn is that they can’t control other people. I think it can take a long time for us to reach the point where we understand that. We can’t make someone love us, or force them to stop drinking, or lecture them to a size two. All those things have to come from within the other person.



Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop us from trying. For some reason, the holidays seem to amplify our expectations of perfection. None of those problems are new. The husband’s affair, the mother’s drinking, the poor relationship between mother and daughter all existed long before the holidays, perhaps for years. Yet we still expect people to be the way we wish they were when it comes to the holidays.



Add the stress of finding this year’s must-have toy, sewing a costume for a pageant, baking cookies for the office cookie swap, attending boring parties with a spouse, cursing at tangled lights, and dealing with a turkey everyone forgot to thaw, and it’s amazing that there aren’t more yuletide murders. Of course, mystery writers love the combination of unrealistic expectations and stress!



In The Diva Cooks A Goose, domestic diva Sophie Winston has a chance to relax because her brother and sister-in-law, Lacy, are hosting the big family celebration. Lacy is a perfectionist, the type who makes lists for everything. She planned ahead and has everything under control until Christmas Eve, when the Christmas presents are stolen right out from under the tree. Poor Lacy. That’s only the beginning of holiday disasters for her family. When her newly separated father arrives with a date, more than one person is ready to commit a merry murder. While Lacy copes with parents she can’t control, Sophie is on the trail of a killer, and when she finds him, she plans to cook his goose!


I wish you and yours a warm and loving holiday season. May your celebrations be festive and may the only murders be properly confined to spellbinding mysteries.


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Krista Davis writes the Domestic Diva Mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime. The first book in the series, THE DIVA RUNS OUT OF THYME, was nominated for an Agatha Award. Her most recent book, THE DIVA COOKS A GOOSE, launches on December 7th!

Reading and the Holidays

Elizabeth Zelvin

Holiday shopping season is upon us, and not only do books make wonderful presents (to give and to receive), but books also played a part in shaping my perceptions and expectations of the holidays. I suspect that this is true for many people.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the great opening line of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women: “ ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.’” Yes, all the way back in 1870, there was no surer way to disappoint a child than not to provide Christmas presents. Thanks to Alcott’s high moral Transcendentalist principles, what the March girls actually do is quit complaining, decide to put their annual one-dollar spending money into presents for their mother instead of treats for themselves, and end up giving away their festive holiday breakfast to an impoverished immigrant family with too many children. Generations of American girls have internalized the lessons in that story.

I can’t remember the name of the 1950s children’s book in which the family had a tradition of reading Dickens’s A Christmas Carol aloud on Christmas Eve, but the idea of such a tradition has stuck with me all these years. I also remember that the youngest boy was in the choir, and there was great tension about whether he would be able to hit the high note in his solo, “Glory to God in the highest,” presumably from Handel’s Messiah. (He did.) I shouldn’t have been paying attention to Christmas at all as a kid, but my Jewish parents were so afraid we’d feel deprived if we couldn’t participate in the general fuss that we decorated what we facetiously called a “Chanukah bush” and got stockings stuffed with presents on Christmas morning. Today, I’m sure there’s an abundance of books about Jewish families celebrating Chanukah and other holidays, but I don’t remember any back then.

In my ecumenical present-day family, we celebrate both holidays. I must admit that rather than reading aloud, we watch movies made from the great books already mentioned: Alastair Sims as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and the Gillian Armstrong version of Little Women, which my husband and I both like in spite of the the terrible miscasting of Winona Ryder as Jo. I recently learned that an old friend from college and her family read Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales aloud every year. So I know that the tradition of holiday reading does survive.

No gift list in our family is complete unless it includes at least one book. Bookstore gift certificates are also a guaranteed successful present, but I, for one, am not happy unless there’s at least one fat hardcover by a favorite mystery author that I wouldn’t have bought for myself under the tree, so I can curl up on the couch with it at some time during the long, lazy day. Books are the present of choice for my stepdaughter and her husband, who live in London, because we can order just what they want from their amazon.co.uk wish lists and have them shipped free. Talk about books I’d never order for myself! And one of the great shopping pleasures these days is buying books for my granddaughters. In the 21st century, there are children’s books about everything. On my last visit the almost-two-year-old had me read her one entitled It’s Potty Time, with separate illustrated editions for boys and girls, and it’s only one of dozens on the subject.

What books are on your holiday gift list? What books, if any, shaped your image of how holidays should be?

Let the shopping begin . . . and other thoughts . . .

Good morning, all. Like Liz, I'm not sure how many people will be checking out blogs on a holiday weekend. Many brave folks got up before the crack of dawn today to stand in line at their local malls, determined to snag all the advertised bargains on Black Friday, (the day after Thanksgiving-when Christmas shopping officially begins, for those of you not here in America.) I'm simply not that brave. It's a jungle out there.

Also, like Liz, I AM thankful for many things. My family and friends first, my writing career, second. Family came early in life, meaning I married young, had kids young, and grandkids followed in a timely manner. Writing a book came late in life. I started my first novel at the age of fifty-five and held the first published book in my hands just one month shy of my sixtieth birthday.

I always admired anyone who could write a book and get it published, but it never occured to me that I could do it, too. I assumed all writers had formal training, and my college time had been limited. Then I read two successive books by best-selling authors that had huge plot errors. I figured I couldn't do any worse, so I started writing my own mystery novel. Ahhh, ignorance is such bliss. Several zillion critiques, a multitude of rejections, and a flood of tears later, the book was accepted by a small publisher. I now have four books published in that series, and the fifth will be out in 2009, if Father Time doesn't get me before then. The first book in my new series, FIFTY-SEVEN HEAVEN comes out from Five Star on December 12th. Yup, lots to be thankful for. So what's my point?

One of my grandsons has already decided what he wants to be when he grows up. An artist. He is rarely without a pencil and paper in hand, even drawing while waiting for our Thanksgiving dinner to be ready (last weekend in conjunction with his birthday and grandpa's.) He's progressed from drawing flat profiles of his favorite subjects to 3-D front views. He still lacks a bit in shading, but he's learning, and he's eager. I'm encouraging him to take lessons, but he's a bit shy of that yet. In time, he'll be eager for them, in order to learn from someone who knows how to teach drawing. I mention this because rare indeed is the person who is born knowing their craft and never takes a single lesson. The world's most famous artists, singers, writers, and other talents generally started out by fumbling around a bit in the dark, teaching themselves, then studying under someone more qualified as they grew. And they got tough critiques, rejections, and shed many tears along the way. It's how we grow.

Right now, we're all surviving the holidays in various ways. Life gets frantic as families spend time enjoying each other's company and scrambling to get it all together for the biggie, Christmas. But hard upon us is the New Year (shriek, can it really be 2008 in just 38 days? What happened to Y2K?) and the time when most of us make the same old resolutions, like lose weight, which finds us again somewhere around mid-June.

Might I suggest, if there's a talent you've always admired, an ability you'd like to foster, that you begin 2008 by learning or honing it? Take painting classes, singing lessons, or join a writer's group? Yes, it's painful if and when you get critiqued or rejected. But you won't reach your goal without it. And who knows what talents you are keeping burried? Grandma Moses was elderly when she became a famous artist. Lots' of authors are AARP members as well.

Take a shot. What have you got to lose? Oh, and happy holidays!