Ten Lords A-Leaping: A Father Christmas Mystery

An affable lead with a sympathetic backstory anchors Benison’s carefully crafted third Father Christmas mystery (after 2012’s Eleven Pipers Piping). Four years earlier, the Rev. Tom Christmas, the vicar of St. Nicholas Church in Thornford Regis, lost his wife as a result of a violent crime, and even as he serves his flock and takes care of his daughter, who has “reached the age of finding her father faintly embarrassing in certain instances,” the wound is still fresh. Christmas once again turns sleuth with his discovery of the strangled corpse of Oliver fforde-Beckett, seventh Marquess of Morborne, on the grounds of the Devon estate of fforde-Beckett’s brother-in-law. The victim, an entertainment entrepreneur, had no shortage of people wishing him ill, including family members disgruntled at his unilateral decision to sell valuable paintings belonging to the family trust and replace them with forgeries. Readers will hope that Christmas will keeping detecting past the partridge-in-a-pear-tree volume. Agent: Dean Cooke, Cooke Agency. (Dec.)