Title: Christmas Calamity
Author: M.K. Scott
Date: 2016
Publisher: Sleeping Dragon
Quote: "Whose idea had it been to have an old-fashioned Victorian Christmas? Oh yeah, right, hers."
This is a re-issue from a series published in an earlier era of the Internet, when people were still surprised that Stephen King had bothered to write an e-book and even his e-book wasn't really selling. If you like the characters (and you probably will) you'll want to collect the whole series, and now you can, in e-book form.
This cozy Christmas murder mystery doesn't contain a lot of overt references to the Bible, though a character does pull one out, but the main character struck me as one big secularized reference to "Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things..." Donna is a Martha-type. Promoted to head nurse, she almost immediately cut back to part-time nursing in order to devote more time to the country inn where she's trying to boost trade through the slow season with that big Victorian Christmas.
Page one finds her wrestling a monster tree through the door, with the help of her snarky, lovable twenty-something assistant. You may need to share the baby-boomer's view of the rising generation to appreciate the characterization of Tennyson (Ten), but let's just say that he's designed to be lovable partly by giving aunts and grandparents that delicious feeling that The Nephews, or their grandchildren, or whoever, are much more competent than he is. Still, Tennyson's not too bad, even if he does freak out at the sight of a clown doll. At some point in this series some young woman will probably find him attractive.
Soon, of course, being an amateur detective with a mild middle-aged crush on a professional one, Donna will be solving a mystery. Part of her Victorian Christmas was having a singer with a sweet, wholesome image entertain her guests. When the singer doesn't show or send an excuse, Donna stays in character and grumbles about the people who leap online to say mean things and make her small town look unfriendly. Then word comes in that the singer died in an accident, on a road that's later described as a death trap--but was it only an accident? Maybe a hunting accident? Or...was Little Miss Wholesome really the sort of person Donna's been valiantly resisting the temptation to call her? Donna's inquiring mind just has to know.
There's a lot going on in this novel--lots of atmosphere, lots of stage-setting for past and future mysteries in the charming little town of Legacy on the Carolina coast. (Donna complains that people don't go there in winter. Well, yes, part of the fun of staying at a really Victorian place on the Carolina coast is having the windows open to catch the cool sea breeze, er, mist...but let's just say that warm weather and wintering birds are found on the Carolina and Georgia coast as well as in Florida, and so are bargain prices at Victorian ocean-view hotels.) You might enjoy Donna's bossy Southern belle of a mother, or the man she's glad she never married, or the realistic rather than romantic interpersonal dramas at the hospital, as much as you enjoy solving the mystery with Donna and Mark. (Donna and Mark are having a long slow romance. At some point in the series they might marry each other, although it's more likely to be for caretaking than parenting purposes.)
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