The Christmas Party

Christmas. A respectable English family. An old English manor house… But Heyer won’t let the holiday run its course. The relatives gathered to celebrate Christmas simply hate each other—so much so that it seems suspicious: did they assemble under the roof of a welcoming house specifically to tear each other’s throats on a quiet, peaceful Christmas Eve?

And then this “holiday” reached its peak—instead of a Christmas gift, the head of the family receives… a knife in the back. It was done so cleverly and skillfully that suspicion falls on everyone else in this quarrelsome, nasty family. After all, at first glance, each guest had reasons to wish the deceased would become dead quickly.

But the wrongdoer didn’t account for the fact that the perceptive Hemmingway, known to the reader from J. Heyer’s previous works, had already risen to the rank of a police inspector. The case ended up in the hands of the great writer’s namesake—and he pulled the mask off the cunning and treacherous murderer.