The Murder of Father Christmas (1934) by Pierre Véry

Last week, I reviewed Paul Halter's L'Homme qui aimait les nuages (The Man Who Loved Clouds, 1999). An enchanting detective story with a dreamy, fairy tale-like quality that reminded me of another French mystery novelist, Pierre Véry, who once said that "what counts for an author," and a person, "is to save what has been able to remain in us as the child that we were" – of that person "full of flaws, of changes of heart, of shadows and mystery." Véry would probably have defined The Man Who Loved Clouds as "a fairy tale for grown-ups" and of his few mysteries to be translated into English can described exactly like that.

L'Assassinat du Père Noël (The Murder of Father Christmas, 1934) was translated by Alan Grimes and published in 2008 by Troubadour Publications, which came with a brief, but insightful, introduction by Roger Giron.

Véry was "a bookseller in rue Monsieur-le-Prince" and this period in his life inspired him to write Léonard ou les délices du bouquiniste (Léonard or the Delights of the Second-Hand Bookseller, 1946), "a charming novella," which made him a visitor to the genre from mainstream fiction. A literary visitor who, according to Xavier Lechard, brought "whimsy and gentle surrealism" to our genre and his first foray was "a pastiche of the English detective novel," entitled Le testament de Basil Crookes (The Testament of Basil Crookes, 1930), but also penned a couple of locked room mysteries – Les quatre vipères (The Four Vipers, 1934) is one of them. Hopefully, The Four Vipers will eventually be translated into English (are you reading this, Pugmire?).

Until that day comes, we have to help ourselves with what we have and that is a mildly surrealistic, Christmas-themed mystery novel that reads like a fairy tale for grown-ups.

The Murder of Father Christmas takes place in Mortefont, a large town in the county of Meurthe-et-Moselle, where the parish priest, Father Jérôme Fuchs, becomes the victim of an attempted burglary in early December. Father Fuchs had just locked away the reliquary of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of the region, when the incident happened, but the intruder miraculously got away from his pursuer.

Somehow, the burglar escaped from "the room on the first floor of the sacristy" without "going back by the staircase" or by "leaving footprints on the muddy earth in the garden" underneath the open window. And this attempt is complemented by an anonymous letter warning the priest "a gang of burglars is preparing to plunder the churches of our region." So they decide to enlist the help of discreet, private-investigator. Enter Prosper Lepicq, Barrister at the Paris Law Court.

Lepicq holds office in modest apartment overlooking the courtyard on the ground floor of a building in rue de Valois in Paris. The office has a room with three large armchairs, a large table stacked with papers and filing cabinets, labeled A to Z, line the wall, but this is only a facade – because "the files were stuffed with blank paper" and "the filing cabinets were full of old newspapers." Lepicq is two months behind on his rent and has a secretary who feverishly began to write gibberish to simulate hard work when their client came to visit them. So pretty much a low-rent Arthur Crook, but this was undoubtedly the most memorable scene of the whole story.

Lepicq immediately disappears from the stage and his place is taken by a Portuguese nobleman, the Marquis de Santa Claus. The children of Mortefont begin to believe he has come to their town to search for an ancient, long-lost relic, the Golden Arm of King René of Anjou, which is rumored to be buried somewhere in the ruined abbey of Gondrange or a nearby castle. One legend says that if "you ask the evening star, you will find the hidden Golden Arm," but this hidden treasure is only a minor plot-thread to give a magical or romantic touch to the story.

Meanwhile, there are two gems stolen from the relic of Saint Nicholas under seemingly impossible circumstances from the locked vault and a German-looking stranger is found murdered near the entrance of an underground passage close to the castle – clad in a Santa Claus custom! So who was the victim and who had been the second Santa Claus? I first read The Murder of Father Christmas nearly a decade ago and was surprised upon my second read to discover the plot was far more consistent than I remember it.

My recollection was that the story was written as one of Gladys Mitchell's imaginative flights of fancies, such as The Rising of the Moon (1945), but the plot here provided answers. And there's logic to all of the madness. Even if it's "the logic of tales of the fantastic." So it was more in line with G.K. Chesterton's "The Flying Stars" (collected in The Innocence of Father Brown, 1911).

The explanation to the impossible escape from the sacristy was silly, at best, but was nicely tied to the inexplicable theft of the gem-stones, which showed a glimmer of ingenuity in its simplicity. This brace of impossibilities are also very minor aspects of the plot with most of the plotting work being put into the murders. I suppose this was, combined with the fairy tale atmosphere of the story, why Halter's The Man Who Loved Clouds reminded me so much of Véry's The Murder of Father Christmas. Two very different detective stories cut from the same magical cloth.

So, in closing, The Murder of Father Christmas is a charming, spiritedly written mystery novel and perfect as a holiday read during those long, dark, but cozy, days of December. As long as you don't expect a stone-cold classic. But highly recommended, if you like to read Christmas-themed (detective) fiction during this time of year.

Lastly, I want to warn readers who want to read The Murder of Father Christmas to hurry with procuring a copy, because the book has been out-of-print for years and secondhand copies appear to be scarce, which are already being offered at exorbitant prices – going all the way up to several hundred dollars or pounds. There are, however, still a few affordable copies floating around. So you better be quick about it.