Ho-Ho-Homicide: "A Murder in Christmas Village" (2015) by Alex Colwell

I first read about Alex Colwell's short story, "A Murder in Christmas Village" (2015), on a now long since deleted website, "The Locked Room Mystery," containing a page listing nineteen seasonal detective novels and short stories – titled "A Locked Room Christmas." Colwell's "A Murder in Christmas Village" was the last, then most recent entry on the list and introduced as the first in "an exciting new cozy mystery series set in quaint, idyllic Christmas Village" where "no one locks their door but locked room mysteries and impossible murders abound."

Normally, the phrase "cozy mystery" is enough to make me turn around, but the idea, or gimmick, of an annual series of Christmas-themed locked room mysteries appealed to me (of course!). So chucked the short story on the big pile and forgot about it.

I recently went through the archived pages of the defunct "The Locked Room Mystery" website and it reminded me "A Murder in Christmas Village" was still residing on the big pile. So looked up the series, to see what has been added to it in the intervening years, but Colwell appears to have abandoned the series after only a single short story – proceeded to drop off the map. A second short story, or novel, seems to have been in the works with "Halloween Villa" in the title. Nothing materialized and this short story is no longer available. I got my hands on a lost locked room mystery, before it got lost 

Alex Colwell's "A Murder in Christmas Village" is a short, sweet and simple seasonal locked room mystery with the kind of killing one doesn't usually associate with cozies. Willard "Wild Willy" Wilkinson, of Wild Willy's Western World, got his throat cut in the property room of the Crestview Theater. The body is lying some five feet into the room and the floor is covered in fresh sawdust, which has impressions of two sets of print, but "neither of which could have belonged to the killer." No weapon was found in the room and the only door locked.

So a double impossibility with a body inside a locked room and a murderer who left no footprints in the fresh sawdust on the floor. Maybe even a triple impossibility, if you count the absence of a murder weapon as an impossible problem. Sheriff Fell is tasked with investigating this bizarre, locked room slaying assisted, sort of, by Mrs. Maribel Claus ("yes, he's my husband"). The clueing here is so fair blatant, the solution is not too difficult to put together before Mrs. Claus passes Sheriff Fell that to-do note to catch the murderer. "A Murder in Christmas Village" only true shortcoming, however, is not that it's too easy to solve, but that it could very well have been a minor locked room gem had it been just a little more original. The solutions to the problems of the locked door, no-footprint and absentee murder weapon are all tricks more than a little familiar to mystery fans – especially those obsessing over impossible crimes. The tricks were put to good use, but not enough to make it anything more than a charming, if bloody, little holiday locked room mystery perfectly suited to warm and brighten those cold, dark days of December. Hey, freshly spilled blood from a severed carotid artery is bright and warm!

A shame Colwell gave up on this series after only a single short stories, and writing in general, because would have liked to see him develop and continue this tradition of holiday-themed impossible crime stories. A tradition that would eventually have added up to a charming (Crippen & Landru?) collection of short stories (Ho-Ho-Homicide: Mrs. Claus Celebrates the Holidays).