Twelve Drummers Drumming
A Father Christmas Mystery
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3.9 • 11 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Introducing a series utterly perfect for cozy fans of Alan Bradley, Alexander McCall Smith, and Louise Penny. The Reverend Tom "Father" Christmas, the newest vicar of Thornford Regis, an idyllic rural town in England, turns detective when one of his parishioners turns up dead in a drum, and everyone in town seems to have something to confess. Tom Christmas came to picturesque Thornford Regis with his young daughter to escape the terrible experience of losing his wife in the city. Her murder sent him packing to the bucolic and charming town, where violent crime isn't supposed to happen and the greatest sin is supposed to be nothing a member of the clergy can't handle. Then, at the town fair, a woman is found murdered. Tom soon learnsthat everyone in Thornford Regis has a secret to hide--infidelity, theft, even past murders. Twelve Drummers Drumming showcases a lovely place to live and/or die, and marks the debut of a planned twelve-book mystery series featuring the brilliant Father Christmas.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This splendid first in a new whodunit series from Canadian author Benison (Death at Windsor Castle) introduces the Rev. Tom Christmas, the new vicar of St. Nicholas Church in the English village of Thornford Regis. Five months earlier, Christmas lost his wife to an unknown murderer in London. Soon after this tragedy, while visiting Thornford, he stepped in to officiate at a funeral service after the incumbent vicar, Peter Kinsey, failed to show. He subsequently replaced Kinsey, who has vanished. Christmas hopes bucolic Thornton will be a good place to rear his nine-year-old daughter, but once again he must deal with a violent death that of Sybella Parry, the choirmaster's grown daughter, whose body he finds inside a large drum. Rejecting the easy explanation, that something in Parry's drug-addicted past led to her demise, Christmas begins to dig, and discovers that Thornford's placidity is only skin-deep. An intelligent and empathic protagonist and skillful prose make this a winner.
