Mission Impossible: "The Christmas Caper" (2022) by Gigi Pandian

Back in February, I reviewed the first novel from Gigi Pandian's "Secret Staircase" series, Under Lock & Skeleton Key (2022), introducing a former magician, Tempest Raj, who exited the stage following a botched, nearly fatal escape trick – now works for her father's Secret Staircase Construction company. A far from ordinary construction company specialized in expanding their clients with “whimsical features” like “sliding bookcases that hid reading nooks” or “wardrobes that led not quite to Narnia but to secret gardens.” Under Lock & Skeleton Key needed to lay the groundwork for the series by introducing the various (recurring) characters, backstories and the main storyline concerning the disappearance of Tempest's mother. Something that came at the expense of the intriguingly-posed impossibility of a fresh corpse being discovered behind a decades-old brick wall.

The second title in the series, The Raven Thief (2023), reportedly is stronger on the locked room puzzle and investigation with a four-sided impossible crime during a séance. But between the first and second novel, Pandian wrote a special short story for the series entitled "The Christmas Caper" (2022). So decided to hold off on The Raven Thief until having read "The Christmas Caper."

Pandian's "The Christmas Caper," published as an ebook, brings Tempest Raj to the ancestral homeland of her Scottish grandmother, Morag, to revive an old family tradition – celebrating Christmas in Edinburgh. They rented an apartment in the building of Morag and Ashok's friend, Sabrina, who asks Tempest to help her save Christmas. Sabrina is a close friends Ronald Abernathy, curator of the Castle Rock Museum, which recently got robbed in spectacular fashion. The museum recently acquired a previously unknown landscape painting by Alexander Nasmyth that was placed in the skylight room, which has a slanted skylight "to give a view of the castle above." The thief cut a hole in the skylight, slid down a rope to take the painting and escaped by rappelling down the side of the building, but accidentally tripped an alarm when noticing people were watching. There was an event going at the castle and someone spotted the masked thief, dressed in climbing gear, on the museum. However, the thief still managed to get away with the painting.

So where's the impossibility in this elaborate smash-and-grab? The skylight room has floor censors and the police first assumed "the thief swung directly to the painting instead of touching down," but the painting was hanging on a wall "further than could be reached by rope without hitting the ground." Someway, somehow the thief took the painting without triggering the floor censors. Simply a question of figuring out how it was done. Tempest has found an answer to the seemingly impossible before and only too happy to help Sabrina saving Christmas for Abernathy.

"The Christmas Caper" is a locked room mystery at its most leisure ("she was only going to do armchair detecting anyway") investigated, and solved, between the other usual activities in the run up to Christmas like scarfing down "scrumptious treats" at the Christmas Market. And providing the story with recipes for Gingerbread Swirl Cookies and Spiced Hot Chocolate. So the story can feel a little too cozy at times and the plot is light enough it can be put together even if the clues aren't too thickly spread around, but nothing to detrimental enough to take the shine of this charming, fun and seasonal impossible crime story. A hearty recommendation for mystery fans who are always on the look out for Christmas mystery novels and short stories to read in December.