THE MISTLETOE MURDER AUDIO EDITION
By P. D. James
Read by Jenny Agutter and Daniel Weyman
Random House Audio
Acknowledged by all to be a first rate crime writer P. D. James was often commissioned by newspapers and magazines to write a Christmas short story. For the first time four of those stories are presented here and are read by two exemplary voice performers - Jenny Agutter and Daniel Weyman.
The title story is a popular novelist’s account of a crime she was involved in some 50 years earlier. A really unpleasant person was murdered during the Christmas season in 1940. There are very few suspects so one listens, expecting an unsurprising outcome until one is a bit shocked by the ending. This tale is James at the peak of her powers!
In “A Very Commonplace Murder” a clerk has several reasons for not coming forward as witness to a murder - one reason is his secret taste for pornography. The clerk is a voyeur and thanks to his unpleasant hobby he is aware of a murder. A man has been accused but he is not the guilty person as the clerk well knows - will he come forward and exonerate the man?
“The Boxdale Inheritance” finds poet-detective Adam Dalgliesh reinvestigating a notorious murder at the behest of his godfather. In the process a family secret is revealed that is so dark it must be hidden again.
We meet a family with “an aversion to natural death” in “The Twelve Clues of Christmas.” Adam Dalgliesh is a mite younger in this tale but nonetheless perspicacious. He comes up with quite a few clues that catch the murderer of one who had supposedly left a suicide note.
P. D. James is much missed but fortunately we can enjoy her works again in this highly listenable audiobook.
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