Mainlining Christmas

I'm going to cut right to the spoiler warning, because Cover Up is a delightful Christmas mystery that fans of noir (and the era in general) deserve to experience without having the story, ending, or even tone spoiled. It's the sort of movie that leaves me confused as to why it's not already considered a classic. That's not to say it's perfect - aspects of the last act are a bit underwhelming - but it's extremely good, compelling, and unlike any other film from the era I've come across. And, like any good mystery, it's better seen without being familiar with the synopsis. You've been warned. For those left, in the first paragraph I recommended this for fans of noir, but I didn't outright identify it as such. Others have, and it certainly bears hallmarks of the pseudo-genre: black and white cinematography, heavy use of shadow, expressionist elements... you know the drill. But ultimately the film almost feels like an anti-noir, leaning more towards...

It's almost easier to describe Merry Christmas as a neo-noir that serves as a throwback to American noir Christmas films of the '40s and '50s, as well as Hitchcock's mysteries, and leave it at that. Only doing so ignores the fact it's an Indian film set in Mumbai and filmed simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil and based on a French crime novel called "Le Monte-charge" which was previously adapted into a 1962 film called, "Paris Pick-Up" (which I'm absolutely adding to my watchlist, despite a sinking suspicion I'll never find a copy). All of which is to say the movie is an intricate web of references and homages spanning continents and eight decades, some of which I'm qualified to discuss and others... not so much. The movie is dedicated to a famous Indian director, and dialogue in the movie itself references what I assume are Indian films inspiring Merry Christmas - I'm sure there are layers I'm missing because I lack a backgroun...

I'm working my way through the collection of "Holiday Noir" Criterion is streaming this year (God, I love that service). Like some of the other movies in this collection, the "noir" label should be taken with a grain of salt. It certainly has elements in common with noir - particularly towards the end - but the tone here is relatively light throughout, and this isn't as stylized as I generally expect from the genre. Or maybe my definition of that term is simply too restrictive - I'll defer to serious noir aficionados so long as they listen to me when I tell them films like Backfire should be recognized as legitimate Christmas movies. Whatever labels you attach to it, this one's quite a lot of fun. It's not unique or bizarre enough to be a "must watch," but it's a pulpy, energetic mystery that throws a barrage of fun twists at you from start to finish. For a movie with an escalating body count (including at least one character you ac...

Murderville is essentially a blend of a cop show parody, a gameshow, and an improv performance. The setup involves a scripted murder mystery in which a celebrity guest, playing the character assigned to solve the crime, is NOT shown the script or provided any sort of preparation. This guest host then needs to stumble through the story while the rest of the cast improvs around them. The show typically uses only one guest, but this isn't a normal episode. For the Christmas special, we get two or three, depending on whether you count a brief surprise spot from Pete Davidson as a real guest. Jason Bateman is around from the start, with Maya Rudolph added about halfway through. Guiding the guest star(s) is Will Arnett, playing Detective Terry Seattle, a parody of the typical hard-as-nails lead. Seattle has an ongoing subplot involving his ex-wife, who's also his boss, though this is less of a factor in this episode. Seattle gets a few scenes with side adventures in this episode. Arn...

I paused this movie about three-fourths of the way through, checked the time stamp, and pumped my fists in the air as I confirmed it qualified under our guidelines as a holiday movie. In case that reaction wasn't clear enough, Mystery of the Wax Museum is getting a recommendation, which means it also gets a spoiler warning. I don't think knowing details about the premise, characters, or plot will significantly undermine the experience in this case, but - just in case - if you're a fan of movies from this era, horror/comedy/adventure hybrids, or really movies in general, this one's a blast. It's also an absolutely gorgeous film that will challenge most viewers' assumptions of what movies from the early '30s looked like. Utilizing the now largely forgotten two-color Technicolor process, the film is both beautiful and eerie. The color, coupled with clever lighting and set design, creates a world that's unreal, evoking the feel of looking at a wax sculpture ...

The Christmas Train is a TV movie based on a novel by David Baldacci released through Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. The story is centered around a former couple, both writers, who bump into each other while traveling across the country. One is working on a movie script for a Hollywood director who's more or less adopted her, and the other is a journalist looking for a story. The movie includes numerous other quirky characters who are also traveling by train and is an exceptionally good... Wait. Hold on. I need to check my notes, because something feels off. Okay, yes. The words, "Hallmark" and "good" both appear on this pad of paper, which... Hold on a minute. These things can be good?!!! Then why the hell have we been sitting through bland, lazy romantic comedies this whole time? No one told me Hallmark was actually capable of putting out good movies! Okay. Let's get back to the movie, which - again - is good. A good Hallmark TV movie. About people recon...

I picked this at random, not realizing a few things: first, it's based on a novel  Lindsay read and reviewed  a few years ago. Second, it's the second movie in a series surrounding the same characters. This is, essentially, the Christmas installment of both the book and movie series. Because I didn't see the first movie, I'm not familiar with the characters, so it's possible (however unlikely, in this case) I'm missing significant context to appreciate jokes, arcs, and the like. In theory, movies are supposed to be made so viewers can watch without first seeing earlier installments, though television shows aren't under that assumed constraint. I'm not entirely sold on that idea as it pertains to movies, and in this case, the situation feels even more muddled. I'm really not sure this can reasonably be called a movie: it feels far more like a long television episode in terms of structure, character, and production values. I should mention this is a Ha...

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories Edited by Martin Edwards, compilation 2019 (US release) New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: A new collection of little-known stories with a holiday twist from the classic age of crime fiction from British Library Crime Classics. Like most short fiction collections, this one is hit and miss. Some of these stories are fun, but none of them are exceptional. Several introductions mention that the author rarely wrote short stories or seldom wrote mysteries. Apparently, this is the third collection from this publisher collecting unknown British crime stories on a wintry theme. What I'm trying to say is, they might be scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point. The first story is by Baroness Orczy of Scarlet Pimpernel fame, and the characters are a lot of fun, although the plot is somewhat lacking. Two of the best stories in the volume follow: “By the Sword,” a tale in wh...

A Cup of Holiday Fear Ellie Alexander, 2019 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Jules runs a bakery in charming artistic tourist town Ashland, Oregon, where she is kept busy preparing for the Christmas rush and snooping around after an out-of-towner ends up dead. I've read quite a few Christmas-themed cozy mysteries by now. Most of them are readable but nothing special. It wasn't immediately clear from the publisher's description that this takes place well into a series, but it was obvious from the first page. Backstory and past relationships are recapped at length, even when they have nothing to do with the plot of this book. I have two fairly substantial issues with this book, and in the end, I can't give it a pass. The first is the mystery itself; it's just uninteresting. The killer is the obviously mean character, the victim was a horrible person, and the resolution takes place entirely ...

Plum Pudding Murder Joanne Fluke, 2009 I have been known to pick up Christmas-themed books on the cheap pretty often and this is one of those cheap reads. It's another cozy mystery, and this one not only reads like a Hallmark movie, it was turned into a literal Hallmark movie. It's the twelfth book in this series, so while all the backstory and name-checking earlier events and established relationships is boring, it's at least excusable. Okay, I said it was a cozy, right? Let's check off the tropes: Hannah owns a cookie shop, is dating a law enforcement guy, and is known to stumble into murders. I was briefly intrigued by the fact that she is also dating a dentist and all three parties seemed happy enough with their relationships. It seemed like a sympathetic portrayal of people who didn't feel the need to lock down a monogamous heterosexual marriage and were comfortable with that. Of course, later the guys both showed little jealousies, and the narrative cle...

In Peppermint Peril Joy Avon, 2018 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. I almost didn’t write a review for this book, because I sort of felt bad. Unless it’s a new pseudonym (completely possible) this is the first book by a new author. And it’s not horrible, it’s just sort of broken. It’s a mishmash of mystery tropes that doesn’t recognize why some work together and others don’t. It’s a holiday mystery that has little to do with the holiday. It has Agatha Christie elements but only sometimes. It has many, many side elements that read like references to previous books (that don’t exist). Worst of all, it’s a cozy mystery with a boring main character. Cozy mysteries live and die by their leads. Almost always female, commonly bakers or small business owners, most modern cozy leads have romantic plots with happy endings or they have husbands who endorse their part-time mystery solving. Not every mystery lead has to be a winner - u...

Not to be confused with Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers was a British spy series from the 60s which cycled through a number of iterations and styles. We've looked at a later episode, " Take-Over ," that sort of fit our loose definition for Christmas in July (absurdly loose: Take-Over was set in February, and the holiday elements only appeared briefly). "Too Many Christmas Trees," on the other hand, was far more entrenched in holiday fare. It was also a more iconic example of the series, featuring Emma Peel, by far the best known of John Steed's partners. In this one, they're pitted against a team of psychics attempting to steal national secrets from Steed's mind by eroding his sanity through a series of yuletide nightmares. This should already be obvious, but I loved the hell out of this episode. All of this is set at an English mansion where Peel was invited for a Christmas party. She invites John after the idea to bring him jus...

The Silence of the Elves Meg Muldoon, 2016 Premise: Holly's been demoted right out of the North Pole through no fault of her own, but she'll need more than hope to get her life back on track. You may recall that I kind of liked another one of Meg Muldoon's holiday-themed cozy mysteries , so when I saw she had a new series that was explicitly about Christmas elves, I had to try it. Unfortunately, I feel that this book was the author attempting to move outside her personal formula and failing. It's a bit like a palette swap. Nothing about the Christmas-elf premise felt committed to or explored fully, just pasted on. There's a thin veneer of elf-ness: Holly mentions her elf instincts to be cheerful, kind, and festive, but we never really see this play out to a greater extent than it would with a naturally cheerful person. The elves are basically indistinguishable from humans, and while Santa, Mrs. Claus, and some extended relations are characters, they are ...

Murder, She Wrote: Manhattans and Murder (1994) and Murder, She Wrote: A Little Yuletide Murder (1998) By Donald Bain The Christmas episode of the show was fairly lackluster , so I suppose it's fair that the novels match. These two brief books are part of a long-running spin-off series that apparently someone will continue to write until society crumbles. (Seriously, Book 47 is available for preorder.) The two books have a few things in common. The author can write passable lines of dialogue and narration, but there's no build from scene to scene and the story as a whole is utterly forgettable. Both books seem determined to raise but refuse to sensitively address social issues (drug addiction and teenage pregnancy, respectively). Most bizarrely, both books feature a minor subplot about someone asking Jessica to write a true-crime novel about the events going on. Unless this was a running gag in all the books, it seems strange not to reference the first event, given...

A Christmas Party (originally published as Envious Casca) Georgette Heyer, 1941 Premise: When the far-flung Herriard clan comes together for Christmas, sparks fly. It's a classic locked-room mystery with the death of a wealthy patriarch and a house full of suspects. Even though this felt like deja vu, (how many times have I read/seen this plot?) I enjoyed it thoroughly, mostly because the characters were so interesting. The characters are more colorful and complex than I've found in many mysteries of this style. Joseph the affable aging actor who's masterminding the party, his stolid wife Maud and her obsession with reading biographies, Paula and the aspiring playwright she drags to the party. We spend the most time shadowing cousin Mathilde who's stylish and practical, down-to-earth and gently sardonic in the face of ludicrous situations. I spotted the murderer right away, (seriously, have I read this story before?) but there was enough fun in watching the ...

Silent Night (A Raine Stockton Dog Mystery) Donna Ball, 2011 Christmas crossposting! (Note: Many of the Christmas books I am reading this year have one notable thing in common -- they were all cheap or free on Kindle some time in the last few years. No other qualifications.) Premise: Raine Stockton runs an obedience school, or she would if the contractors would finish upgrading her facility. She trains dogs, keeps dogs, and sometimes that means she follows their noses right into trouble. This is another cozy mystery that’s more what I would call romantic slice-of-life with a pinch of mystery. Raine’s friends, job, and trouble with men are, if not interchangeable with others I’ve read, certainly of a type. The mystery isn’t much of the story - someone is stealing nativity Jesuses and some puppies are abandoned. Also a teenager’s abusive father turns up mysteriously dead, but Raine and company only briefly feel like they are in any danger, and she only gets involved because ...

The secret of the title is half obvious and half boring. Just putting that up front. Murder, She Wrote can sometimes be charming, and sometimes it can just be tedious. This is one of the latter. Angela Lansbury does her best to maintain unflappable enthusiasm and charm, but the story is downright dull. We open in that deceptively peaceful Maine town, Cabot Cove, which is welcoming Charlie, a young veteran who is engaged to Beth, the daughter of a prominent family. Charlie is thrilled to be so embraced by the community, as he and his sister grew up in foster care. He has something important to tell Beth, and gives her a key to his hotel room so they can meet up later. Except they don’t. Instead he finds a tape with a blackmail message on it, and he has dinner with Beth but doesn’t talk to her about anything important. We know that the son of Beth’s father’s business partner resents Charlie’s presence in town, but he’s a red herring. There’s also another sketchy young man (Floy...