Otto Penzler 
Christmas Crimes at The Mysterious Bookshop 

Thirteen festive crime stories set in New York City’s beloved mystery bookstore

The oldest mystery specialty bookstore in the world, The Mysterious Bookshop, has for most of its forty-five-year history commissioned an original short story as a holiday gift for its customers. Written exclusively for the store and never published elsewhere, the stories were given as a holiday gift to its customers as a thank you for their business, handed out or mailed between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.



The prompt for the story requires three elements: that it be set at Christmastime, that it involve a crime of some kind, or the suspicion of one, and that it be set at least partially in the bookstore. And from these loose structural guidelines, diverse tales took flight. The thirteen tales included in this volume are among the finest to be produced in this annual tradition, sure to charm any reader looking for a holiday-themed escape.



Included herein are the ingenious “Snowflake Time” by Laura Lippman; Lyndsay Faye’s tale of vengeance “A Midnight Clear”; the challenging brainteaser, “A Christmas Puzzle, ” by Ragnar Jónasson; “Hester’s Gift, ” an impossible crime story by Tom Mead; the suspenseful “The Christmas Party” by Jeffery Deaver; Thomas Perry’s hilarious comedy of errors, “Here We Come A-Wassailing;” and other tales appropriate for the season, collected and introduced by Otto Penzler. The result is, objectively speaking, the finest “stocking stuffer” that a mystery fan could hope to find.

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CONTENTS



Introduction by Otto Penzler

Black Christmas by Jason Starr

A Midnight Clear by Lyndsay Faye

The Gift of King Herod by Brendan Du Bois

Wolfe Trap by Loren D. Estleman

Secret Santa by Ace Atkins

The Gift of the Wiseguy by Rob Hart

Snowflake Time by Laura Lippman

The Christmas Party by Jeffery Deaver

Here We Come A-Wassailing by Thomas Perry

A Christmas Puzzle by Ragnar Jónasson

Hester’s Gift by Tom Mead

Sergeant Santa by David Gordon

End Game by Martin Edwards

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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 Noir Con and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.