The 12 Slays of Christmas

As hard as it is to return from terrific vacation, I did read some interesting books while I was away. The 12 Slays of Christmas by various authors was one of them.

If you love short mystery stories or novellas, this is the book for you. In A View to a Chill by Larissa Reinhart, she uses both of her lead characters, Cherry Tucker and Maize Albright in a mystery that brings the Hollywood movie star turned detective Maize to Halo, Georgia, to search for the missing granddaughter of Celia Fowler. For the past five years Mrs. Fowler has asked Nash Security Solutions to find Krystal, but it has been a wild goose chase each year. All Nash can tell Mrs. Fowler is Krystal is not dead or in prison.

Maize decides she can't let the older woman suffer at Christmas so she takes herself to Halo. In Halo Cherry Tucker is not feeling the holiday spirit. She is suffering from the flu and doesn't want to be around anyone, especially her eight-months pregnant sister. While lying in bed lazily gazing across the way to the window of her neighbor Mrs. Boyes, she notices a reindeer strangling Mrs.Boyes. Sure she is hallucinating, she falls back to sleep.

There's much confusion and bringing Cherry and Maize together was a great idea.

Another story in The 12 Slays of Christmas is The Worst Noel by Amy Reade. Lilly loves the holidays, but Black Friday at her Juniper Junction Jewels is bound to be busy. As she approaches her store, she sees every shop owners' nightmare - the door to the business is open.  Worse yet, there is a body on the floor.  Nothing worse for a business than to be closed during the Black Friday weekend.

Lilly struggles with finding the killer so she can open her shop and The Worst Noel leads her in many directions.

I enjoyed the other stories and they are a good read anytime of the year.

Could not resist a photo from my cruise to Cuba and Key West (met Lucy Burdette, more to come on that). My husband and I in a 1954 BelAir Chevy with 3 million miles on it.