What’s Hogmanay Homicide all about?:
Set in the early 1900’s, Hogmanay Homicide tells the story of friends at a New Year’s Eve house party where one of them is brutally murdered. The question is, which one of the friends did the deed?
What did I think?:
I’m loving my short stories challenge as it continues especially with collections like these where I find so many new to me authors that I’ve never heard of before. Edward Marston is a pseudonym for the British author Keith Miles who has written a number of different novels in a variety of genres from historical fiction and mystery to children’s books. This collection so far has featured a number of contemporary crime narratives so I found it quite refreshing to read something based much earlier in time that had a very classic, Edwardian feel to it.
Our main character in Hogmanay Homicide is Hawley Crippen, married to Cora for a number of years yet exhibiting quite a strained relationship with his wife who is prominent in the theater world, singing opera for a living. They decide to host a New Year’s Eve party, something he is dreading as he thinks very little of some of the invited guests. They consist of Cora’s good friend Mabel, a magician and his assistant, a brash Scotsman called Angus and a Frenchman called Landru, whom Huxley is particularly suspicious of.
So, we’ve all been at one of those parties where too much of the old drink is taken and the inebriated individual becomes loud, opinionated and incredibly irritating. This is what happens at this particular party with one guest which leads to horrific consequences when the drunkard ends up at the bottom of the cellar stairs, head smashed in with a large piece of coal. Not the best start to a New Year you might say! Hawley is determined that no-one will leave the house until he figures out who the villain is and what reason they had to murder the guest.
As I mentioned earlier, I did enjoy that this story was set in the 1900’s in comparison to more contemporary crime I’ve read recently. For a while at least, I did also enjoy the writing style although I never particularly warmed to any of the characters. The magician was bland, his female assistant more so, Angus was just a caricature of a typical Scotsman – which I have to admit annoyed me slightly and I didn’t feel either Hawley or his wife Cora had any real redeeming features at all which would make me interested in them. The only slightly intriguing character for me was the Frenchman, Landru and that was mainly because of the air of mystery that surrounded him and the reasons why he was in the country. There were parts I really enjoyed about this little story despite my misgivings however and I wouldn’t mind trying something else by this author.
Would I recommend it?:
Not sure.
Star rating (out of 5):
NEXT SHORT STORY: What We Save by Julie Orringer from the collection How To Breathe Underwater
