The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021) by P.J. Fitzsimmons

P.J. Fitzsimmons is a ghostwriter for mainstream genres who "dreams of an alternative reality in which P.G. Wodehouse wrote locked room mysteries." Not content with waiting for the Mandela Effect to release a reality-update to patch that flaw, Fitzsimmons took matters into his own hands with the Anty Boisjoly series of classically-styled, "strictly for laughs," historical locked room cozies – nine to date published between 2020 and 2024. Fitzsimmons describes his literary shenanigans as "either an inexcusable offense to several beloved canons or a hilarious, fast-paced, manor house murder mystery."

I was honestly put off a little by the "cozy" label, but the second novel in the series, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning (2021), is a seasonally appropriate mystery. So why not give it a shot and see if the series is worth pursuing.

The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning, set in 1928, brings professional idler and man-about-town, Anty Boisjoly, to the dairy town of Graze Hill to spend Christmas with his Aunty Azalea at Herding House. Upon his arrival, Aunty Azalea greets her nephew with the following lines that open the story, "Merry Christmas Anty dear. There's a dead body under the tree." The victim is her neighbor, Major Aaron “Flaps” Fleming, who garnered fame as brave, dare devil World War I flying ace – "credited with shooting down forty-one enemy aircraft." After the war ended, the reclusive Flaps Fleming retired from public life and took Tannery Lodge in Graze Hill. That's where Aunty Azalea found him on Christmas morning with a knife-handle sticking out of his back, but there are two worryingly aspects about the murder.

Firstly, there are two trails of footprints in the snow leading to Tannery Lodge. One track of footprints belong to Flap Fleming and the other track of footprints to Azalea, which is good news for the police, but her nephew won't stand for Detective-Inspector Ivor Wittersham measuring his aunt's neck for a noose. But how did the real murderer escape from the lodge without leaving footprints in the snow? Secondly, hours after the murder was discovered, Flaps Fleming apparently walked into the Sulky Cow and "stood everyone a round of drinks" before walking back to the lodge to resume his duties as corpse. This is not going to be the last time a fresh murder victim decides to have a final drink at the local pub. Not to mention the problem of the theft of the church's weather vane from the tower without any footprints of the thief on the snowy roof.

In that regard, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning follows the pattern of today's emerging locked room specialists who aren't satisfied with merely one, or two, impossible crimes and inexplicable situations – preferring to string together numerous, often interconnected impossibilities. Where the story differs, however, is the focus on the characters, potential motives, a webwork of secrets and comedy rather than plot-mechanics. I understand the other novels give more attention to the locked room problems, but here Anty has to poke around the depleted regulars of the Sulky Cow ("...Graze Hill is something of a ghost town over Christmas") and some other curious arrivals in town. Such as the victim's foppish nephew, Cosmo Millicent, who's determined to write his uncle wartime biography and one of Flap Fleming's old wartime flying buddies, Flight-Lieutenant Montgomery Hern-Fowler. And he has his own Christmas ghost story to tell. The whole thing is drenched in witty dialogue and hilarious misunderstandings in the great tradition of British comedy.

Fitzsimmons noted that this series is a homage to the likes of P.G. Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome, Margery Allingham and Dorothy L. Sayers, but The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning stands closer to comedic mysteries of Leo Bruce, Edmund Crispin, R.T. Campbell and David Renwick's Jonathan Creek. A comedic highlight of the story is Reverend Padget composing a Christmas carol, "intended to be sung to the tune of In dulci jubilo," which recounts in rhyme "the events leading to the death by stoning of Saint Stephen." Anty had "rashly lavished" praised on the atrocity without reading it nor knowing what it would lead to. So the book is never boring, always amusing and sometimes genuinely funny, even if Anty puts it on a little too thickly at times. So it handily avoided one of the biggest sins a detective story can be guilty of, namely being dull and boring, but worried about the plot and where the ending was heading. Could a comedic, tongue-in-cheek mystery deliver on the intriguing premise when the plot-mechanics haven't been given the fullest attention and consideration? Surprisingly, it did. Well, mostly.

The solutions to the various impossibilities are, pleasantly, neither routine nor uninspired and think its actually quite clever how more than half of those various, different impossible situations (SPOILER/ROT13) jrer rkcynvarq ol gur zheqrere univat npprff gb gur pybpx gbjre jvgu vgf sbhe-fvqrq, vaqrcraqrag pybpx snprf. A glimpse of what could have been had Christopher Bush fully applied himself to the impossible crime tale. I'm still in two minds about the murder and ghostly appearance of Flaps Flemings at the Sulky Cow. Anty needed to do a lot of talking to make it sound halfway convincing, not even wholly unsuccessfully, because I can see how it would work when (SPOILER/ROT13) gur vzcrefbangvbaf ner vagregjvarq naq rirelbar unf frra/vagrenpgrq jvgu obgu irefvbaf. But why? I thought the motive and reasoning behind that part of the solution to be a trifle weak, but, other than that, The Case of the Ghost of Christmas Morning proved to be a better than expected and welcome addition to the growing list of Christmas (locked room) mysteries. The Case of the Canterfell Codicil (2020) and The Tale of the Tenpenny Tontine (2021) are going to be added to the big pile for 2025.