This is my second post on stories from Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards. This anthology of vintage crime stories was published by the British Library in 2016.
I have now read all the stories in the book. For the most part they were all entertaining, with some better than others.
The last story in Crimson Snow is "The Carol Singers" by Josephine Bell. This was my first experience reading anything by Bell, and I was encouraged to try more of her writing.
It is a dark, sad story of an elderly woman spending Christmas alone because her daughter's children have chicken pox. On Christmas Eve, two sets of carolers visit her home after dark, and she has misgivings about opening the door to them. As it turns out, with good reason.
This story isn't really a mystery to the reader because we know what has occurred and who perpetrated the crime. It is more focused on how the investigation is carried out with very little evidence. The story begins before Christmas and it take several days to solve the crime.
This is one of the longer stories in the book, at 40 pages. The length is put to good use with more character development than usual, and more depth of plot.
See my earlier post about two other stories in the book here. See George Kelley's review for additonal comments on the stories and a list of all the stories.
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Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2016 (orig. pub. by The British Library Publishing Division, 2016)
Editor: Martin Edwards
Length: 311 pages
Format: Trade paperback
Genre: Mysteries, short story collection
Source: Borrowed from my husband.
