The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories

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Like so many crime writers, P. D. James was drawn to her vocation out of love. Before she took up her pen, she was a keen reader of detective novels, and over her long career she remained fascinated by the so-called Golden Age that followed the end of the First World War. But she was more than a fan. She applied her keen intelligence to what she read and developed a genuine expertise on the subject. I once heard her lecture on the four Queens of Crime—Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh—and she even wrote a fascinating monograph on the subject, Talking About Detective Fiction. That love for the work of her predecessors is evident in this collection of her short stories: she picks the pockets of the mechanics of Golden Age plotting; Agatha Christie is referenced several times; and there are knowing nods to the conventions of traditional “cosy” mystery stories.

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