This year I read quite a few Christmas themed stories in December. One of them came up in a generic search on the Hoopla app. The author, Heather Redmond, was new to me. I’m a fan, as you know, of A Christmas Carol. So a murder mystery entitled A Christmas Carol Murder peaked my interest.

What I was unaware of at the time was that this is the third book in a series. I have to admit, the concept of this series is an interesting one. Each of the five books is part of “A Dickens of a Crime” series and feature – Charles Dickens.

The series takes place in 1835-1836 and follows a young Charles Dickens as a journalist for the Evening Chronicle. In the series, Charles and his fiancé, Kate, are amateur detectives who set out to solve crimes. Each of the book’s titles are a play on a Dickens classic. They are:

• A Tale of Two Murders (A Tale of Two Cities)
• Grave Expectations (Great Expectations)
• A Christmas Carol Murder (A Christmas Carol)
• The Pickwick Murders (The Pickwick Papers)
• A Twist of Murder (Oliver Twist)

The characters in A Christmas Carol Murder all (purposely, I’m guessing) have names similar to characters in A Christmas Carol. Emmanuel Screws sounds a lot like Ebenezer Scrooge, while Jacob Harley (his partner) sounds like Jacob Marley. I don’t know for sure, but I would imagine the other books follow this same pattern.

Anyway, let me give you the Goodreads synopsis, in case you want to read it now or next Christmas.

The latest novel from Heather Redmond’s acclaimed mystery series finds young Charles Dickens suspecting a miser of pushing his partner out a window, but his fiancée Kate Hogarth takes a more charitable view of the old man’s innocence . . .
 
London, December 1835: Charles and Kate are out with friends and family for a chilly night of caroling and good cheer. But their blood truly runs cold when their singing is interrupted by a body plummeting from an upper window of a house. They soon learn the dead man at their feet, his neck strangely wrapped in chains, is Jacob Harley, the business partner of the resident of the house, an unpleasant codger who owns a counting house, one Emmanuel Screws.
 
Ever the journalist, Charles dedicates himself to discovering who’s behind the diabolical defenestration. But before he can investigate further, Harley’s corpse is stolen. Following that, Charles is visited in his quarters by what appears to be Harley’s ghost—or is it merely Charles’s overwrought imagination? He continues to suspect Emmanuel, the same penurious penny pincher who denied his father a loan years ago, but Kate insists the old man is too weak to heave a body out a window. Their mutual affection and admiration can accommodate a difference of opinion, but matters are complicated by the unexpected arrival of an infant orphan. Charles must find the child a home while solving a murder, to ensure that the next one in chains is the guilty party . . .

Again, I thought this was a neat idea. It is fun to imagine that these characters and bits of the mystery itself might just influence Dickens. Perhaps influence him enough to use them in his Christmas Carol story.

The story was a fun read. I’m not sure that I will get the others in the series, but who knows. I’m not that familiar with the other Dickens books. I don’t know that I would get all the “tie ins” in them. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t, however. I’m sure that any Dickens fan will love the series and appreciate it more than me.

3.5 out of 5 stars