Christmas and crime don’t get together often enough for my liking–although I always love to call It’s a Wonderful Life a Christmas noir, because it’s actually an incredibly dark film if you look below the effervescent sugary surface. (I’ve always wanted to write a book set in the world created had George Bailey never existed–Potterville.) Agatha Christie handled the holidays in a couple of books, most notably Murder for Christmas, and the occasional short story. (This is a good place to note that when I was talking about my own Christmas writings, I’d forgotten “The Snow Globe”, which is my most Christmas story of them all; the one I did remember to mention, “The Snow Queen,” was more a winter’s tale than a Christmas one.)
Lisa Unger is one of my favorite writers, and she’s also pretty prolific; I turned and looked away for a moment and suddenly I was way behind on reading her books. I had never caught up on the backlist, either; so I think focusing on that is a good plan for 2024. When i saw that she had written a Christmas novella, getting it was a no-brainer–and I read it in one day…and it reminded me again why I love her work so much.
I always loved Christmas. I still remember how magical it was to believe in Santa Claus, lying in bed at night, trying to stay up to hear the pitter-patter of reindeer hoofs on the roof. Then falling asleep and waking up to the tree glowing downstairs, the floor covered with gifts, my parents groggy and smiling.
I saw him, my sister would say. On the lawn, climbing out of his sleigh.
And I would be so jealous that she got to see Santa, while I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough. She was always first. Always better. Still is.
I lean against the pole now, arching my back, all eyes on me. The music pulses and the stage lights beneath my high heels flash–purple, blue, orange, red. I am alive here, all of it moving through me. Tonight, I perform to various Katy Perry songs–a playlist I made. “Hummingbird Heartbeat.” “Peacock.” “Part of Me.” All songs that are sexy and upbeat but have a secret message. Like me. No one is listening to the music though. The smattering of men sitting on stools and in various booths, nursing drinks, are only thinking about one thing.
Ten years ago, Madeline Martin survived a brutal night in which her best friend was murdered, and two others disappeared. Maddie herself was stabbed multiple times and the side of her face slashed. Her boyfriend was convicted of the crimes and sent to prison–he was a rich bad boy exiled to their upstate New York town (but further south than the Hollows, the town Unger writes about a lot), and for whatever reason, he just kind of went nuts that night during a wild party at his home a few days before Christmas. The two sisters who vanished were never found, and the assumption has always been he killed them also and got rid of the bodies…which really doesn’t make a lot of sense. Maddie’s father was the sheriff, and he has recently had a stroke, requiring at home care, while she runs her own bookstore with some success. Maddie has also closed herself off from dating–who wouldn’t, when your high school boyfriend turned out to be a psycho killer–and at the very beginning of the book, true crime podcaster/writer Harley Granger has come to town, buying the home where the missing sisters once lived, to turn over the stones and interview people–he doesn’t believe for one moment that Evan Handy had the time and ability to not only do what witnesses saw (stabbing Maddie and killing her friend) AND kidnap and murder and hide the bodies of the missing sisters. Harley thinks Evan either had help, or there’s an unrelated serial killer operating in the area–and the disappearance of a stripper named Lolly from the area is proof–along with some other young women gone missing in the years since that nightmare of a night that Maddie can barely remember.
This is Lisa Unger at her best; she writes brilliantly, defining and developing realistic characters that the reader can identify with and relate to and root for; delving into the psychology of what it must be like to survive a night like the one Maddie did as a teenager allows for complexity and many layers and facets to her character, and despite the shortness of the story (compared to Unger’s novels), it’s fully realized, compelling, and hard to put down. Unger’s pacing is urgent, grabs you by the throat and refuses to let go until you’ve turned the final page.
Which is why she is one of my favorite writers.
Queer and Loathing in America 