Halloween, Red Riding Hood Again, All Soul's Day, November, Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes Day

Hey, Halloween isn't over until all the candy's gone.  Pumpkins still grin out from porches.  The October light still lingers.

I had a more difficult time identifying the costumes this year, not hip to all of the popular characters on television these days.  An ordinarily attired lad walked up to the door and held his box out for candy.  When asked, he said he was dressed up as a fisherman, his costume apparel consisting of a common fishing ball cap and the small fishing rod he was carrying.  First time I'd heard of that one.

I blogged about the Red Riding Hood legend the other day, at this link, and I was delighted to see one couple playing the part better than any other I could find, even with a net search.  Not only did Kris and Tracy help to brighten Halloween for us, but Oreo and Gremlin got into the spirit as well.

A lot of ghostly stories take place after Halloween, in November, including a number of detective novels about solving murders that happened on Halloween night.  Then too, there are all those other holidays on this week's international calendar, especially those connected to the Gunpowder Plot, a la MacBeth.

One of the best of these is R. D. Wingfield's detective novel, Hard Frost.  The murder takes place on Halloween and the novel spans the time from Halloween to Guy Fawkes day.  Wingfield's quirky detective, Jack Frost, is not politically correct but he is magnificently funny going up against the Bureaucracy and trying to do the right thing in spite of it.  He is flawed but endearingly so, a bit like Colombo of old.

Another good mystery set  in November is Stephen Dobyns' Saratoga Haunting, which pushes genre just a bit and is one of the best of the series.  Dobyns' straight-laced Charlie Bradshaw is balanced by the cynical, wise-cracking Victor Plotz, his assistant in this one and a central character in novels which came later.

Dobyns hasn't published a mystery novel in a long time, and I surely do miss reading about his characters.

I think the dustjacket illustration on the first edition is great too:

FROST AT CHRISTMAS: A DARKLY HUMOROUS MYSTERY DEALING WITH SERIOUS ISSUES

One of my December reads this year is R. D. Wingfield’s Frost at Christmas (Crime Lines). It is not a Christmas novel, but a British police procedural that takes place from December 16th through December 20^th, the last official days of fall. The holiday season is in the background, as is snowstorm after snowstorm. I’m glad I read it now.


Its author was always something of a recluse, shunning interviews and the public spotlight. According to Wikipedia, this was his first novel, written at the publisher’s request, yet never published until many years later in Canada.

Wikipedia doesn’t say why the novel was rejected nor does it say how much it was revised before its publication. Wingfield did not write it as the first in a series, but as a stand alone novel in which its protagonist, Jack Frost, would die at the end. I wish I could see it the way he originally wrote it. To say that Frost is not correct politically is to put it mildly.


Inspector Jack Frost is one of the more interesting characters I’ve encountered in fiction this year. There is a short prologue that makes no sense until you get to the end. The author does not introduce Frost into the main narrative until page 50 or so (in a 280 page book), and your first impression of him (if you have not yet read others in the series nor watched the British television show that features the character) is not a good one.

Frost’s true character is revealed slowly, subtly, beautifully. At first he seems just a simple rude, crude, macho, sexist jerk. But the narrative twists and turns in an unexpected way, and then you see him as a rebel against the conformists--a sloppy, vulgar, earthy Dionysius in the midst of an Apollonian police bureaucracy, and you find yourself cheering for him. A bit like Colombo, it seems that while he has little talent for doing things right, he has a knack for doing the right things to solve the case at hand.

But the cases pile up, and more of his character is revealed as it turns out that he is not quite the man you thought he was. Still sympathetic, even more so, but you can see that the man is empty, and engaged in a personal flight from emptiness, a self-destructive flight.


As the novel goes on, it becomes obvious that Frost has undiagnosed attention-deficit syndrome. He cannot concentrate on any one thing for long, but flits around from chore to chore. The paperwork he despises grows like the national debt. More of his character is revealed, and the logic behind his character flaws--that is, the cause and effect--becomes clear. The end of the novel makes sense, but the publishers must have insisted that all of the loose ends be tied up and some of them appear melodramatic and logically flawed.

I can’t say that this is a great novel, but it is one that I certainly enjoyed and one I will not soon forget.

Some Books To Read This Holiday Season

E. E. Cummings' SANTA CLAUS: A MORALITY. I've read this already, and it is very good. There was a time when I saw no connection between Halloween and Christmas, when I thought THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS an impossible conjunction. But as Ray Bradbury and many others have noted, the season is about life, death, and rebirth.

And beyond that, love. E. E. Cummings said it well in this 1946 play, which is revised and revived in Terry Pratchett's own eccentric way in HOGFATHER, also excellent. Death-in-life and Santa, same/same.

Christmas used to be the designated time for ghost stories, as at this link, and the most enthralling ghosts of all in Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL and its many derivatives.

THE DREADED FEAST: WRITERS ON ENDURING THE HOLIDAYS edited by Michele Clarke and Taylor Plimpton, with an introduction by P. J. O'Rourke. Includes essays by Lewis Lapham, James Thurber, Roy Blunt, jr., Robert Benchley, David Sedaris, Charles Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, Dave Barry, S. J. Perelman, Jay McInerney, John Cheever, and many others.

I'M DREAMING OF A BLACK CHRISTMAS by Lewis Black. I read this one yesterday, a quick rant of a read. He was reluctant to write a book ranting about Christmas, being Jewish, but I'm glad that he did. The last chapter is a memoir of his participation in the USO tour to Afghanistan along with Kid Rock, Lance Armstrong, and fellow comic Robin Williams.

THE FAT MAN: A TALE OF NORTH POLE NOIR by Kent Harmon. At first I took this to be comparable to Christopher Moore's THE STUPIDIST ANGEL, but this looks like a much better book. And something of a collector's item in first edition. Like Scott Phillips THE ICE HARVEST and others at this link, this must be something of an anti-Christmas novel. We'll see.

Earlier this year, I read Clancy Martin's excellent HOW TO SELL: A NOVEL, and if you're looking for a darkly humorous read for the holidays, I highly recommend it.  The first part of the novel ends at Christmas, and it is a darkly humorous indictment of capitalist greed.

CHRISTMAS AT THE MYSTERIOUS BOOKSHOP, edited by Otto Penzler. The proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop commissioned stories for this collection by Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, Michael Malone, Donald Westlake, Thomas H. Cook, and other mystery authors. It looks good to me.

Ed McBain's DOWNTOWN and MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. The former is a stand alone novel, a thriller that doesn't take itself seriously occuring on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, neither predictable nor logical, but fun if you can grasp the little jokes and topical references, contemporary when this was published in 1993 but now dated. The latter is a suitcase-full-of-money 87th Precinct novel which takes place over the holidays, one of McBain's best novels.  THE RAP sheet was kind enough to carry my long review of it, here.

R. D. Wingfield's FROST AT CHRISTMAS. After reading his HARD FROST that takes place from Halloween to Guy Fawkes Day. His series protagonist is British and a sexist, but his political incorrectness seems intentional/satirical rather than blind.

A FATAL GRACE by Louise Penny. I read her first novel, STILL LIFE, which takes place over (Canadian) Thanksgiving, and her main characters all continue into this novel, which takes place during the Christmas holidays. Louise Penny has garnered a lot of awards.  STILL LIFE seemed too implausible for my taste, but maybe I'll find her later novels more interesting.

HOLIDAY GRIND by Cleo Coyle. Another cozy murder mystery taking place over the holidays, this one containing "recipes and coffee-making tips."  It's gotten some good reviews.  We'll see.

PANDORA'S CLOCK by John J. Nance. A thriller set during the holidays involving an airplane with a virus on board and Christian countries which refuse to let it land.

Craig Johnson's THE COLD DISH which takes place in the winter (and over the holidays) in snowy Wyoming. 

IN THE DARK STREETS SHINETH by historian David McCullough.  A handsome hardcover with small print but a mighty thin book.  It comes with a DVD which we watched on Pearl Harbor Day.  He briefly tells some stories of the 1941 Christmas in the United States and also gives the background behind two Christmas Carols.  Nicely done, and the Mormon Tabornacle Choir sings in the background.