The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year

Ally Carter

This romantic whodunnit has everything good and sweet: a manor house setting with secret passages, cozy golden age mystery tropes, a cranky heroine who hates Christmas for reasons, and plenty of holiday magic, including ridiculous reindeer sweaters. It’s a Hallmark Christmas movie cookie decorated with Knives Out frosting. Delicious and just dangerous enough.

Our hero and heroine — Maggie and Ethan — are both mystery authors. They share a publisher and a history together that’s slowly revealed throughout the book. From the jump, all we know is that Maggie loathes two things with equal fervor: Christmas and Ethan Wyatt.

Maggie writes cozy murder mysteries in the style of Eleanor Ashley — our fictional stand-in for the real-life Agatha Christie. In Maggie’s world, Eleanor has written 99 novels and, at 80 years old, is the greatest crime writer of all time. Our Maggie idolizes Eleanor and aspires to carry on her mystery-writing legacy.

Ethan, on the other hand, writes thrillers and is, as Maggie says with derision in her voice, a ‘leather jacket’ guy. He’s finger guns in human form, all flash and attitude, no substance. Handsome and charming, Ethan is the kind of guy who could get voted prom king at a school he didn’t even go to. Most annoyingly, he always gets Maggie’s name wrong, no matter how many times she tells him it’s not Marcie.

A her publisher’s Christmas party, which Maggie has been tricked into attending, she receives a very unexpected present: She’s been invited to spend the holidays on Eleanor Ashley’s grand estate in England. Maggie buzzes with happy anticipation as she glides onto a private jet to fly across the Atlantic — until she realizes her arch-nemesis Ethan is also aboard.

And everything gets worse from there. A massive snowstorm traps them ine the mansion , and the next morning, Eleanor — the Duchess of Death herself — has vanished from inside a locked room. As Maggie applies her mystery-writing skills to figuring out what happened to Eleanour, another guest is poisoned. Then someone shoots at Maggie. The power goes out. The snow piles higher. And much to our delight, Christmas, murdery, romantic hijinks ensue.

The author Ally Carter is great at writing sweet romance. There’s humor and a sense of fun — you understand why these people might fall for each other. She also gives her characters backstories so we care when they finally kiss. The mystery at the heart of this story is also solid. There’s a classic, closed-circle-of-suspects cast that includes a bumbling detective, a duke and duchess, and a trusted butler, plus a niece, doctor, and lawyer with dubious motives. They’re all very much character types, but who cares? We’re here for Maggie and Ethan — their advance and retreat romance, their stolen embraces, and their teamwork to solve the mystery.

On a scale of one to ten for holiday magic, this book earns 11 out of ten kisses under the mistletoe for the aforementioned snowstorm, a hedge maze blanketed in snow, Christmas sweaters that represent the 12 days of Christmas and various reindeer — plus the name of the mansion? It’s Mistletoe Manor.

If you enjoy Netflix Christmas movies and golden-age crime novels, this is the story to read whilst eating a Christmas cookie and sipping hot cocoa.

Maggie hadn’t always hated Christmas. There had been a time when she’d loved the lights and the presents and the trees. She knew all the words to at least thirty different Christmas carols and used to sing them in July. She had a sweatshirt with a reindeer on it that she always wore to school on the Monday after Thanksgiving. (Did the nose light up? Yes, yes it did. Did she wear it that way? Absolutely… So the problem wasn’t that Maggie hated Christmas; the problem was that Christmas hated Maggie. Every terrible thing that had ever happened to her had occurred with a backdrop of carols and lights, and, eventually, Maggie had no choice but to start taking it personally. — Ally Carter

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