Mike Finn’s Reviews > A Candle for Christmas & Other Stories > Status Update

ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS ★★★★★

Reginald Hill packs in a whole novel's worth of plot twists to this short story about a newborn baby abducted on Christmas morning. Dalziel, Pascoe and Wieldy hack their way through an undergrowth of distractions to track down the baby and his abductors, ending with a dramatic chase in the darkness through the deep snow of rural Yorkshire.

ON THE PSYCHIATRIST'S COUCH ★★★★

It's not easy to write an engaging story told entirely in the first person by someone addressing a person who remains silent throughout, but Reginal Hill does it. The narrator, a convicted serial killer talking to a psychologist, tells his life story. He's at pains to sound rational and of sound mind. The longer he talked, the more my sense that something bad was happening grew.

THE DIFFERENCE ★★★★

A dark imagination, a talent for misdirection, accessible atmospheric prose and a grounding in real life makes this a story the perfectly demonstrates Reginald Hills talents. An egaging story with a sting in the tale that changed my perception of everything I though I'd understood.

WHERE ARE ALL THE NAUGHTY PEOPLE? ★★★★★

A quietly horrifying story, set in a graveyard and a crypt but with nothing supernatural going on, just people being people. At first, the story is told as the narrator remembers seeing it when he was an eight-year-old with the graveyard as his playground. Then the narrator, now ihis fifties, is finally forced to apply an adult's understanding to what he saw back then.

URBAN LEGEND ★★★

An ingenious twist on urban legends. This one is a true story, told by someone who was there. What the truth was still took me by surprise.

THE MAN WHO DEFENESTRATED HIS SISTER ★★★

This started as what felt like a light-hearted piece of Victorian era crime fiction. Then it transformed into an intriguing puzzle of the kind Sherlock might have enjoyed solving. Then the realities of class and institutional power came to dominate the story, leading to an ending that was surprising, orginal and chilling.

THE GAME OF DOG ★★★

A truly ingenious idea for the perfect murder, wrapped up bleak, male Yorkshire humour that changes it from a devilish plot into something almost whimsical.

THE ITALIAN SHERLOCK HOLMES ★★★

The tone of this Sherlock Holmes pastiche was pitch perfect. The setting was exotic. The locked-room plot was fun. I was disappointed that, in the end, Holmes did little to affect the outcome.

THE BOY AND MAN BOOKER ★★★★

A witty swipe at the pomposity of the Booker Prize, the mix of predation and sycophancy of the agent/writer relationship and the high-strung egos of authors, became more than a satire as I spent time inside the unpleasant mind of Boy David, a nervous but arrogant writer, blinded to his own narcissism and misogyny. I hated him by the time the threats started. I applauded the clever ending.

SILENT NIGHT ★★★★

A beuatifully done, orginal, emotionally engaging Christmas Eve ghost story, set in a small English village.