The Santa Klaus Murder

Originally published in 1936, this delightful entry in the British Library Crime Classics series from Hay (1894–1979) contains all the elements of a golden age English whodunit. At Christmas-time, the members of the Melbury family gather at their ancestral home, Flaxmere, in the county of Haulmshire. Almost everyone at Flaxmere has some motive for murdering the family patriarch, Sir Osmond, who’s discovered shot in the study on Christmas Day. Colonel Halstock, a neighbor and the local chief constable, leads the investigation, and he soon comes to the unsatisfying initial conclusion that the only person who had the opportunity to kill Sir Osmond was the young man in the Santa suit who had no motive for the deed. Hay (Murder Underground) sets Halstock a merry puzzle, with family members changing their stories at every turn for their own reasons. Halstock eventually susses out the killer’s identity in such a way to cause the reader to exclaim, “Of course!” (Oct.)