The Body in the Sleigh

Faith Fairchild #18

by Katherine Hall Page

“Katherine Hall Page is my favorite writer of the traditional mystery. Not only is The Body in the Sleigh a gripping whodunit, but it’s a classic tale of hope.”





—Harlan Coben







 



Caterer and minister’s wife Faith Fairchild is back to solve her eighteenth deadly mystery in The Body in the Sleigh—the latest perfect puzzler in author Katherine Hall Page’s multiple Agatha Award-winning series. Set on Sanpere Island in Maine’s Penobscot Bay, this atmospheric holiday whodunit is chock-full of suspense, surprises, real heart, and small miracles. And, as always, the mystery comes with recipes for delectable holiday treats from Faith Fairchild’s kitchen.

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Christmas, Fiction, Cozy, Cooking, Holiday

355 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 13, 2009

About the author

Katherine Hall Page is the author of twenty-five previous Faith Fairchild mysteries, the first of which received the Agatha Award for best first mystery. The Body in the Snowdrift was honored with the Agatha Award for best novel of 2006. Page also won an Agatha for her short story “The Would-Be Widower.” The recipient of the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement, she has been nominated for the Edgar, the Mary Higgins Clark, the Maine Literary, and the Macavity Awards. She lives in Massachusetts and Maine with her husband.

Reviews

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

My feeling about the Faith Fairchild series that this author writes has always been lukewarm, but this book seemed much better. The plot and characters were more developed and the story line was representative of the curent times. It was a fast read and quite enjoyable - looking forward to where "the body" next lands.

[KF-in-Georgia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got an email today from the Tewksbury Public Library. They do lots of online e-meetings, and they have a mystery book club meeting December 2--a day and a half from now. I emailed the organizer and zipped over to Amazon to order the book. This book.

(The group also has a crafters' meeting on Zoom. December 16. I've got the pattern and yarn for a sweater. I need to find the right needles and get organized. I signed up for that one, too, and I can watch Christmas movies--or webinars--while I knit.)

I've been doing lots of genealogy seminars online during the pandemic, and working a lot on our family tree. But today I fell asleep during a couple of four-hour seminars on Scotland. (Ancestry says I'm 39% Scottish. Och, aye.) I slept enough today that I'll probably have a hard time sleeping tonight. I might finish this book tonight. (And I have another webinar tomorrow.)

Anyhow: tame, cozyish mystery set in Maine. It's odd to start a murder mystery series with book 18. I'm still trying to get to my 2020 goal of 52 books this year, even though I went through a few months earlier this year with no desire to read, knit, or do genealogy--so I'm making up for lost time. I'll probably finish the year with a bunch of kids' books.

Finished the book at 2am December 1. The nice characters are nice. The nasty characters are really nasty.

[Andi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Extremely improbable. Extremes of weather and behavior. Both violence and ineptitude by the drug dealing villains

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

#18. I’m flying through these like candy, enjoying the warm characters, the evolution of Faith, Tom, Ben and Amy and their friends and quirky neighbors. This Christmas finds the Fairchilds at their Sanpere Island, Maine, summer Home, far from their usual Aleford catering and pastoral duties as Tom recovers from emergency surgery (gall stones). Faith discovers the body of a teenage girl, Norah/Zara, in a decorative sleigh, Mary Bethany, middle-aged spinster who keeps Nubian goats and makes cheese finds a newborn baby in her goats’ manger on Christmas Eve, and several people are looking for a whole lot of money, the baby, and the baby’s mother. The epidemic of drug culture, its victims, users, dealers, prevalent in Maine with its endless, convoluted coastline and desolate border with Canada tears apart Sanpere’s closely knit residents who include the Fairchilds as part of the family.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Talk about alternating points of view - wow. I understand Page wanted the reader to see how various characters felt about what was happening to them but I felt she lost focus. This was about almost everything except the murder plus we got very little Faith.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, fast read and I love the family characters.

[Melanie Houser · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me forever but finally finished this book! Great feel good book for the holiday season.

[Joanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was more unsettling than most installments of this series.

[Jennie Louwes · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Body in the Sleigh" has a very contemporary feel to it. It's a storyline that could have been taken from today's headlines. Crimes and sin patterns threaded throughout, with mentions of God, and characters you'll fall in love with.

Although contemporary, well paced, and a good mystery I've rated this 3 stars following the "Goodreads guidelines" - I liked it, one character (Mary) will stay with me, but I don't feel the need to rush out and start with body #1. I'm content with having discovered this author (and series) at body #18.

Speaking of body #18, having not read the previous 17 books in the series wasn't a hindrance in reading this "who done it." You understand, and become an extended family member of those in the book, right from the start. I imagine most books, in the series, are interwoven with the main family characters present, finding them in various stages of vulnerability; however, each book autonomous and able to stand alone.

I did find the books inclusion of Maine quisine recipe staples, mentioned within the storyline, (with the recipes included in the back of the book), to be a fun inclusion/add on by Katherine Hall Page. Due to the recipes, and my affectionate kinship with the aforementioned 'Mary', this book will be finding a place on my ever expanding home library's shelves (at least for a time). With promises of sharing a separate, but equal, book review, and a recipe, with my audience at MomPro.com soon.

PSA (Public Service Announcement) and fair warning: This books crimes/sin patterns are not for the faint of heart. They are described in enough detail that you walk away thankful the details stop, and spare you any further harm, when they do. Some of the crimes will turn your stomach; but, this is life. The side of it we wish we didn't ever have to know about, try to shove out of our minds, and often pretend isn't there even though it's all around each of us.

The above is part of why I gave this book a 3 star rating and could only bring myself to like it. I wish I could have gotten to know the characters without knowing their crimes or back stories; but, then it wouldn't have been true to life and feel as real.

The author did a great job; this book simply wasn't my cup of tea. Even so, I'm left here pondering, as I write this review, the importance of getting uncomfortable, reaching beyond my isolated walls, and doing something to help others on a far more tangible level than merely words on a page or a screen. We each have our own gifts and talents, we're meant to share them; but, I think we're meant to share them with ALL people. This means, reaching out to those within aspects of life we wish we didn't see and doing something far greater than just putting a dollar in a cup, or volunteering at a youth center a couple times a month, etc. Another book, if taken to heart and truly thought about, that should spur you into some type of action (beyond your daily norm) to go out and do something positive within the community where you live. Seek out those in trouble and offer help to lift them up and out of the pit they've found themselves in.

Becoming more human and living beyond self... that's how we change the world.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faith and her family head to their cottage in Maine for Christmas to give her husband time to recover from surgery and pancreatitis. What starts out as a lovely period of family bonding becomes more complicated by two local mysteries. First Faith stumbles across the body of a dead girl in a sled and then a baby in a basket is delivered to a local goat farmer on Christmas Eve.

This is different from most other books in the series because we see what is happening from the points of view of many of the characters. There are also flashbacks to the childhoods of several characters so we learn more about them and are able to empathize more deeply with them.

Although it’s a well told story it is definitely a deeply sad story as well. Also the flashbacks do give away much of the mystery before the end. Nevertheless the story maintains tension through the end.

Definitely has Christmas atmosphere and end with delicious recipes.

[Phair · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had read and enjoyed the first couple of books in this series long ago at time of publication and had only a vague recollection of liking them but not much else (this was before I began journaling my reads). Sleigh, #18, was the holiday selection of my f2f mystery group and I wish I could say welcome back Faith Fairchild and Co. but sadly I found the story confusing with too many “regular” characters as well as many new ones relating to the mystery du jour so I was hard pressed to remember who was who and what the relationships were. I did recall that Faith was a caterer but by this one she must have been taking a sabbatical as the only mention of food was limited to holiday meals and the goat cheese (yuck!) being produced by one of the locals. (Attached recipes were not to my taste either.) Not the best reintroduction to a long running series. Doubt I will be hurrying to fill in the rest of them.

[Beverly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I certainly hated to start with the 18th book in the series but I didn't have time to read the first 17 and still get this one done for out Mystery Book Club this month. I thought this was a great cozy and I didn't feel lost reading it, so I'm thinking this series is OK to be read out of order. Interesting characters who felt very human and likable. This story also left me with a warm holiday feeling. My only confusion came with the fact that the body found in the sleigh, although certainly related, was not the main mystery...at least in my mind. But, overall, a great, quick read that kept me turning pages well past my bedtime. Oh, and there are recipes at the end of the book for some of the wonderfully delicious food they talk about throughout the book.

[Zermeena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rounded up from 3 1/2 stars. The first half of this b0ok was a lot of description. Finally the chess pieces started moving and it got more interesting. There was a some redundancy with retelling the Christmas story. Multiple characters named Mary. I was confused in the beginning because I thought Mary Bethany was a double first name instead of a first and last name.

The mystery was easy for me to solve. The final scenes of wrapping up the mystery felt both rushed and bogged down at the same time.

[Joanna Peterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this one. So much so that I wondered why the action was ramping up so early, then looked down and realized I was already 76% of the way through the story. Usually I’m checking the percentages on my Kindle and feeling like I’m slogging through. This story hit me in the feels, especially with the flashback that made me want to grab the character before the murder occurred and save them.

[Joyce Hertzoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this entry to the long series about a minister’s wife who more often than not can be found investigating a crime, the Fairchilds are on Sanpere Island in Maine for the Christmas holiday. Tom is recovering from surgery, but Faith discovers a dead body of a young woman in a sleigh that’s part of the town’s decorations for the holiday. Throw in an abandoned baby and you get a well-written Christmas mystery. A quick and enjoyable read.

[Deby Beran · Rating 4 out of 5]

I always enjoy a Christmas read in December and especially one that's not all mushy romance. This is a murder, drug, abandoned baby mystery in small town Maine.
So I thoroughly enjoyed the characters, the plot, the setting and the ending. Only downside is s now I want to go back and start from the beginning of the series. So many books so little time!

[RC Prentice · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of several “Body in the …” series. Nothing very profound here, but there are a limited number of characters to keep track of and although the concatenation of events may seem just a wee bit improbable and biblical, the light touch that KH Page gives to all her narratives makes it a fast, enjoyable read.

[Maureen O'Connor · Rating 1 out of 5]

An attempt at a heartwarming Christmas story with a dead body and an abandoned baby The characters are flat and poorly developed The plot is predictable Unrealistic resolution finishes off the mess This may be the worst of the authors efforts It’s only redeeming value is its brevity

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Katherine Hall Page takes us into the life of Faith Fairchild and the lives of her family and friends. The books are always interesting to read -- fun meals to consider replicating and some mysteries. I enjoy them.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars. I found this a mixed bag. I really enjoyed the Christmas themed parts of the book, but the juxtaposition of the ugly drug world and sexual abuse felt very jarring. So I really liked half of the book, but not the other half.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one feels bleak and depressing, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but probably isn't what I want to be reading right now.

The level of the mystery is low. The level of coincidence is high. The quality of the side characters is very high.

[Lorlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cozy. Minister's wife with family on an island for Xmas. Girl found dead in sleigh -- a baby left with the island recluse goat farmer -- and they all come together.

[Julie Trapp · Rating 2 out of 5]

2 1/2 Faith finds the body of a young girl in a decorative sleigh outside a store. Far too many side stories in this book.

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my typical but a nice cozy mystery.

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

What fun to go to Maine for the Christmas. Of course, you must add murder and mayhem. Good book!

[Ann Nonymouse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series is getting more emotional and less of the fun cozy mystery type that I prefer.

[Karla]

https://www.goodreads.com/review/new/...#

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maintaining high quality, another innovative plot.

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Want to read more of her books

[Teresa Roberts · Rating 1 out of 5]

boring