Golden Age Christmas Mysteries

Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler selects Christmas-themed mysteries from the American authors active during the genre’s Golden Age, including stories by Mary Roberts Rinehart, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, and more.

Christmas has served as a fertile background for mystery fiction for a very long time, perhaps because it has the appearance of a time of peace and love while being so deeply at odds with violence, crime, and even murder.

Many of the stories in this anthology have been written by some of the greatest Golden Age authors, undoubtedly inspired by the juxtaposition of the disparate elements of love and hate. There is a cliché about anthologies (and clichés become clichés because they are true) that compares them to a good party, where you see old friends and meet new ones—and this collection is a wonderful example. It offers such giants of the genre as Ellery Queen, Mary Roberts Rinehart, John D. MacDonald, and John Dickson Carr while introducing you to such lesser-known writers as Norvell Page, Meredith Nicholson, and Pat Frank.

The range of subjects and styles may be surprising, ranging from truly chilling to heart-warming to hilarious to puzzling. This is no accident, of course, since genuinely talented authors have their own voices and, like snowflakes, no two are alike. Golden Age Christmas Mysteries is the perfect gift for the season, to be read on a cold, snowy night, in a comfortable chair near a blazing fire.

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of the Mysterious Press (1975); Mysterious Press.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from Noircon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.