“The Murder of Santa Claus” is a Locked-Room Christmas-Mystery (two great sub-genres for the price of one!). It can be found in a volume called Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P.D. James. It is a story told 40+ years after a Christmas Eve murder in an atmospheric Cotswold manor house. P.D. James uses two narrators to tell her story: a mediocre mystery novelist who there when his uncle was murdered and a retired policeman who investigated the crime.

Locked Room Mysteries are, of course, a staple of the Cozy Mystery sub-genre. In “The Murder of Santa Claus,” James manages to do several very interesting things with the story while at the same time still holding true the sub-genre’s conventions.

As I have said here before, the struggle with reviewing Mystery short stories is how much can you talk about the plot of such a small story that you want to recommend to others without giving too much away.

But since this is P.D. James we are talking about, I will simply let her hook your interest. Here is the first paragraph from “The Murder of Santa Claus.” If this doesn’t convince you to find a copy of Sleep No More to read this excellent story, nothing will:

If you’re an addict of detective fiction, you may have heard of me, Charles Mickledore. I say addict advisably; no occasional or highly discriminating reader of the genre is likely to ask for my latest offering at his public library. I’m no H. R. F. Keating, no Dick Francis, not even a P. D. James. But I do a workmanlike job on the old conventions, for those who like their murders cosy, and, although my amateur detective, the Hon. Martin Carstairs, has been described as a pallid copy of Peter Wimsey, at least I haven’t burdened him with a monocle, or with Harriet Vane for that matter. I make enough to augment a modest private income. Unmarried, solitary, unsociable; why should I expect my writing to be any more successful than my life?