Sometimes, I despair. Sometimes, I read a book that is just thoroughly bad. Unbelievably bad. As in, how-does-something-like-this-get-published? bad.
And moreover, how in the world does someone who writes this book get a contract to write seven more books after this one?
The book: Christmas is Murder, by C.S. Challinor (which I sure hope is a pen name because surely nobody would want to be known as the person who wrote Christmas is Murder).
First: why did I read it? It was a Christmas gift. I read books people give me for Christmas. I hasten to add that this book was not given to me by my wife. I hope the person who gave me this book has never read it. I hope it was just on the bargain rack of Christmas books at Barnes and Noble.
It was a story pretending to be a mystery—a sort of Agatha Christie whodunit except Agatha Christie threw out manuscript fragments vastly better than this. It isn’t fair to call it a mystery because it was perfectly obvious who done it the whole time.
The best thing that can possibly be said about this book is that it didn’t take long to read the whole thing. In fact, that is the only good thing that can be said about this book. I am trying hard to think of something else which was just bad instead of unbelievably awfully bad, but I can’t. I started this blog post thinking I would catalogue all the crimes of this book—not the crimes in the book, but the crimes of the book, but I cannot bear to start listing them because it would take forever.
I don’t even know where to start. So, how about this? I’ll give you the motive for the murder.
You see, there is this lady who runs a bed and breakfast. Her husband and son both died in Iraq. An editor from some publishing house is staying at the bed and breakfast. The editor has a manuscript she (the editor) is supposed to read to decide whether to publish the book or not. The manuscript is a book about George Bush. So, the owner of the bed and breakfast decides to murder the editor and burn the manuscript because she (the owner) doesn’t like George Bush. I’m not kidding. That is the motive. By the way, the editor doesn’t like the manuscript—on page 30, she calls her firm and tells them that the book is terrible and shouldn’t be published.
That motive is one of the more plausible things in the book, by the way. Because, if you kill some mid-level editor at a publishing house to which an author submitted a manuscript about George Bush, then obviously…hmmm. I can’t figure out what happens after that, but it is obviously a good thing for someone whose husband and son died in Iraq.
I know you don’t believe me that the motive is one of the more plausible things in the book. I know you think the book can’t be that bad. So, how about this? After the editor dies, our hero, the amazing Rex Graves, looks for the manuscript, but it can’t be found. But, gosh, there is a big pile of ash in the fireplace. Maybe that is the manuscript? Fortunately, there are some small fragments that are not burned. One of those fragments says “l Qa” That starts lots of wondering about what “l Qa” could be. Hard to figure. So, they look in a dictionary and it turns out every English word that starts with a Q is followed by a u. Shocking.
Yeah, you don’t believe me that this is shocking, but I can prove it. A quotation from Christmas is Murder: “Well, blow me,” Charley said. “I never realized every word in the English language beginning with ‘q’ started ‘qu.’” (That incidentally, is one of the more artfully written passages in the book.) Fortunately, our hero later sees a newspaper which has…get this…an article about Al Qaeda…Wow! who would have thought of that?…so, maybe that heap of ashes was the missing manuscript about George Bush.
Ok, so that is not even remotely the most implausible thing in the book. How about this? Three people are murdered in this hotel. Ah, but there is a big snowstorm. The hotel is close enough to town that our hero can walk to the hotel from town using a pair of tennis rackets he inexplicably brought along with him as snowshoes. Ah, but the police can’t make it to the hotel. Three murders, but, you know, the police guy in town, he has this cold, see, and there is all that snow, I mean there is a lot of snow, so it is really hard for the police to go up to the hotel to deal with all these murders, but maybe in a day or two, if some of the snow melts, they can come up to investigate.
Sadly, all the guests of the hotel also feel obligated to hang around a hotel with a mass murderer running around because, you know, it would be a drag to trudge through the snow to get down to town to stay at a hotel with no mass murderer. Well, except that our hero and his love interest do ski down to town to go out for a beer, but, you know, it is rather silly to just stay in town, so they go on back up to the hotel.
Yeah, that isn’t the most implausible thing either. The most implausible thing is that anyone could write this book and that anyone could read it and think it should be published. Yet it happened. I have the evidence on my desk. I despair. Truly, I despair.
Oh, and if you still think the book can’t be all that bad, if you think I am just exaggerating, then I dare you to read it. In fact, I double dog dare you to read it.
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