Why are there so many murder mysteries set at Christmas, asks book reviewer COLIN STEELE.

Why are so many murder mysteries set at Christmas? Christmas allows an author to bring together a limited set of characters, many of whom do not get on with each other, in a relatively confined space, which then allows the detective to explore the individual motivation for murder in some detail.

The contrast between the abundance of food and drink and goodwill towards all men and women and the darkness of a sudden murder is also a good framework for a plot.

British Library Publishing is renowned for its reprinting of classic British crime fiction. On cue for Christmas, it delivers two classic Christmas mysteries, which certainly background the murder narratives with an atmospheric evocation of the season.

Martin Edwards is an award-winning crime writer who has long been involved with the British Library classic murder editions. In Silent Nights. Christmas Mysteries ( British Library, $22.99), Edwards brings together some famous Golden Age authors with their take on Christmas murders, many with aristocratic settings and investigators.

Dorothy L Sayers in The Necklace Of Pearls sees Lord Peter Wimsey invited to Sir Septimus Shale’s Christmas dinner party. Every year, Shale gives his daughter, Margharita, an expensive pearl necklace on her birthday which falls on Christmas Day. After a lavish dinner with five wines, the guests reluctantly agree to play Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?, for which Margharita takes off her necklace, only to find it has disappeared at the end of the game.

It could only be one of the guests that has stolen it, but after everyone has been searched there is no sign of the necklace. Here is a  variant on the classic locked-room mystery. Can Wimsey track down the ingenious theft and the culprit? Of course, he does.

Margery Allingham’s The Case is Altered features her famous detective, Albert Campion, who is invited to Sir Philip Cookham’s Jacobean country house at Christmas. In this case, the mystery relates to missing vital government papers relating to new aircraft purchases and the motivations behind family and business dealings. This plotline need not have been set at Christmas.

Edmund Crispin’s The Name on the Window begins on Boxing Day evening when Detective Inspector Humbleby knocks on the door of the North Oxford home of Crispin’s famous detective Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature.

Humbleby can’t get back to London because of the bad weather and, seeking refuge for the night, tells Fen about a Christmas Eve murder that he is investigating. Sir Lucas Welsh, a leading architect, was stabbed to death in the pavilion of the country estate of  another famous architect, Sir Charles Moberley.

In what seems to be a classic locked-room murder, Sir Lucas had left the name Otto in the dust of the window-pane, which leads directly to the arrest of the only house guest so named. Needless to say, Fen is able to prove Otto’s innocence and uncover the real murderer.

Other famous names in the collection include Edgar Wallace, Arthur Conan Doyle and GK Chesterton with a Father Brown Christmas story, in  a cultural setting far, far away from the successful TV series.

AGATHA Christie’s  Hercule Poirot’s Christmas, published in 1939. is now taken as the standard for a Christmas country house murder, a setting in which many of the family and the guests have cause to kill the wealthy owner.

However, this plot line was covered three years earlier by Mavis Doriel Hay in The Santa Klaus Murder (The British Library, $22.99). Hay begins the book with first-person accounts written by members of Sir Osmond Melbury’s family as a way of introducing the characters and family tensions.

Melbury, arrogant and controlling, has summoned his large family to his Flaxmere country house for Christmas. He is believed to be considering changing his will, which gives nearly everyone present a motive for the murder that ensues. After Melbury is shot dead on Christmas Day, Colonel Halstock, the Chief Constable, is brought in to investigate everyone’s alibis and movements. Hay delivers a classic unravelling of the murder, but her characterisation lacks depth compared to Christie.