Welcome to Day 11 of #12booksofchristmas. During December I am sharing 12 festive reads. The idea came from the wonderful Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod where a book is given on Christmas Eve and read together. My husband and I started this tradition a few years back with each other. #12booksof christmas will hopefully give you some ideas of books to pick. This is my 5th year doing this and you can check out a whole host of books on my books for Christmas page at the bottom of this post. In case you’ve missed any titles below is a list of #12books so far this year…

• Day One - Countdown to Christmas by Jo Thomas
• Day Two - Who KIlled Father Christmas Edited by Martin Edwards
• Day Three - This Christmas in Paris by Sophie Claire
• Day Four - Tied up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh
• Day Five - Winter in New York by Josie Silver
• Day Six - A Shirley Hughes Christmas by Shirley Hughes
• Day Seven - How To Survive Christmas by Jilly Cooper
• Day Eight - The Christmas Book Club by Sarah Morgan
• Day Nine - The Christmas Jigsaw Murders by Alexandra Benedict
• Day Ten - Snug in Iceland by Victoria Walker

This is the penultimate day of #12booksofchristmas and I cannot believe how quick it has flown. I do hope you have enjoyed the selections so far. I do love reading Christmas books and for a small time flirted with the idea of doing just a Christmas reads blog. I hope the Christmas season is very enjoyable for you. I always have a panic at the start of December that I will never be ready, and my husband always reminds me that there are some people who start their shopping on Christmas Eve.

After finishing our village panto, which was immense fun, it was lovely to read about another panto, which goes wrong for very different reasons than a forgotten line, or the Dame's wig coming off! It's a book by the wonderful Janice Hallett, whose novels feature quite a bit on this blog.

The Plot

Christmas in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive pantomime, jack and the Beanstalk, to raise money for the Church roof appeal. But, despite the season, goodwill is definitely lacking amongst the amateur dramatics enthusiasts. Sarah-Jane is fending off threats to her new position as Chair, the fibreglass beanstalk may be full of asbestos, and someone is intent on ruining the panto even before the curtain goes up.

There’s also the matter of the dead body. Who could possibly have had the victim on their naughty list? Join lawyers Femi and Charlotte as they read the round robins, the emails and pore over the police transcripts. Will you discover the truth before they do? And will the show go on?

My Thoughts

I very much enjoyed The Appeal and was delighted when Janice Hallett announced a festive mystery featuring a number of the previous characters and with the same format. For those of you who may not have yet read The Appeal, you are absolutely fine to read this as a stand-alone novel. A number of characters feature again, and the format is the same.

Moving onto that format, top QC Roderick Tanner sets Femi and Charlotte a new mystery. The story is told through emails, documents, a rather annoying round robin and police interviews. This is a very effective story-telling technique, we get to compare and contrast tone, subject-matter and one woman’s determined attempts to bring the Chair down with a firm case of sour-grapes and undermining. It’s very funny and extremely effective.

Hints are dropped, secret conversations are shared widely, and rumours started. But then a body is found…in the beanstalk no less and we turn detective.

I am very pleased to inform you that our Pantomime is nothing like this one. The Christmas Appeal is a tale of one-upmanship, snobbery and a number of hard-working people working hard to ensure the play fails rather than learning their lines. This would make a wonderful Jolobokaflod for someone who enjoys their crime, or even just a darn good laugh. Loved it.