A Lady Emily Christmas Story
Lady Emily Mysteries
by Tasha Alexander
My rating: 3.4 of 5 stars
Short Christmas story from a mystery series that I love very much, not only thanks to the 2 main characters, Lady Emily, an amateur sleuth, and her husband Colin, a spy in the service of the English crown, but also thanks to the historical part always included by the author in her novels and to the mysteries/detection aspect always very well thought.
While usually I really love the novels in the series (almost always 4 and 5 stars for me), the short Christmas stories had disappointed me a little so far: set at Christmas, they had nothing Christmas-like about them.
That didn't stop me from reading the last short Christmas story I had left with these protagonists and finally in this little book I was able to breathe a bit of festive air.
___THE PLOT___ London, 1901. While Lady Emily and her family are shopping in Hamley's toy shop, a stranger gives her three sons some Christmas crackers that, when opened, reveal a mysterious messages.
Meanwhile, a slightly eccentric man requests the help of Colin and Lady Emily to find his daughter, taken away by the parents of his wife who died during childbirth.
---> In this story, as in the longer novels is palpable the mutual love between Emily and her husband and the joy and serenity of the whole family with their 3 children and the faithful nanny.
The moments of shopping, ironic but affectionate jokes between the two spouses, the excitement of the children in opening the crackers, give a lively and fun atmosphere to the story.
The mystery of the disappearance of the daughter of the man, who hired our two investigators, is well thought out despite the brevity of the story and it's engaging until its conclusion.
---> The only thing that always annoys me are the dialogues that the author writes for the 3 children: they are 5 years old and even assuming that they are ultra-intelligent kids, at that age they cannot speak as politely as 20-year-old adults who they have already completed the entire course of their studies. We know that the 3 children already know how to read and one of them is a little genius... but the speeches made by all 3 children are unlikely in reality.
Despite this, I always recommend this series to all lovers of historical mysteries, in my opinion it is one of the best, especially if you love the historical component (don't start from the Christmas stories, start from the 1st or 2nd novel in the series)
(Thanks for reading my review, please pardon me for any errors in the text, I'm from Italy and English is not my language )
If you are interested in other reviews about Lady Emily mysteries you can find 2 of them here ( I also reaad other books in the series past years, but I didn't have my blog yet, I'm trying to rewrite them all, but it takes time )
BOOK #2 : "A Poisoned Season"
BOOK #3 : "A Fatal Waltz"
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