Have Yourself a Cozy Little Christmas

My daughter used to sing a little Christmas shopping ditty to the tune of Jingle Bells that started "Schlepping  through the slush/ With eight bags in my hands/Four more stores to go/And  sleet comes down in bands." We would have to stop frequently for nourishment and to thaw out our feet and check our lists in those days.

Nowadays, I spend less time schlepping and more time clicking––gotta love that internet!––but the principle is the same: holiday gift shopping, however you do it, is hard work, and accomplishing all or part of it earns the shopper a break and a modest reward. Warm hearths, good books, and chocolate aprés shopping are appropriate.

Dogs and mountains make a wonderful cozy combination, and Christmas seems particularly suited to those pleasures. In Donna Ball's Silent Night, Raine Stockton and her rescue dog Cisco are facing their first Christmas with no human companions since her divorce from Buck, the sheriff in their small North Carolina town. She is surprised when Miles, a rich developer smitten with her, shows up for the annual Christmas parade (she and Cisco are herding the live sheep) with a sullen adolescent daughter in tow whose mother is in Brazil on her third honeymoon.

A murder, a live newborn showing up in the town's Christmas crèche, and Miles's bratty daughter, Melanie, contrive to keep the holiday season full. Author Donna Ball obviously loves dogs, and dog lovers have followed this series with much interest, as it provides a lot of information about rescue dog training and use in the wild Appalachian mountains.

If you crave a tongue-in-cheek English village cozy, Andrea Frazer's Belchester Chronicles are light and amusing. In White Christmas with a Wobbly Knee, Lady Amanda Golightly and her friend, Hugo Cholmondley-Crighton-Crump, have decided to open her stately home to tours. To practice, they invite a few old friends in for drinks and tours on Boxing Day.

When one of the guests, a writer who is penning an exposé that he claims will blow the village wide open, is found dead in the library––murdered by five different methods––plans are changed abruptly for everyone. And if you think your relatives are difficult at Christmas, Lady Amanda's mother, declared dead many years ago, shows up unexpectedly to visit while her villa in France is being renovated. This is a silly, charming series; perfect for a mildly bibulous evening by the fire.

Nero Wolfe is far from the first detective who springs to mind at Christmas, but Rex Stout's And Four to Go contains four short stories set around various holidays.

In Christmas Party, sheer desperation drives the maestro to folly. A friend of Archie's wants to pressure her boyfriend to pop the question, and asks for his help. Archie produces a faked marriage license and agrees to escort her to a party where she will announce their "engagement."

When Wolfe wants Archie to do something for him instead of attending the party, the annoyed sidekick produces the license and discusses his upcoming nuptials with his flabbergasted boss. To assess this catastrophe in the making, Wolfe leaves his brownstone and attends the party disguised in a Santa suit. When a man is found murdered, the mortified misogynist flees rather than be unmasked, thus becoming Inspector Cramer's prime suspect.

The Cat Who Turned On and Off is probably my favorite in the late Lilian Jackson Braun's lengthy series featuring James Qwilleran and his ace cat detectives, Koko and Yum Yum. Qwilleran, a recovering alcoholic and reporter for The Daily Fluxion, acquired both of the beautiful Siamese cats by default when their respective owners were murdered. As the story opens, the three are sharing a room in a hotel one scant step above sleazy. Qwil is in a bit of a bind; he has no furniture so wants to find a furnished apartment, but can't find a landlord willing to risk his furniture to a pair of cats with all their claws. Hoping to win a cash prize offered for the best Christmas story, he sells his editor on a series about Junktown, a section of the city with numerous antique and junk shops.

When Qwil attends an auction of the stock of a dealer killed in an accident and learns that the victim's apartment over the shop of junkers Iris and C.C. Cobb is available, he jumps at the opportunity. As any cat owner could tell you, mayhem and the occasional theft of small objects ensue. But murder is over the top, and dainty Yum Yum, an accomplished thief, keeps bringing curious items that suggest a motive for the crime.

This third book in the series was written in the 1960s, and the author took a 30-year hiatus after it before writing another. Followers of the series will know that Qwil's situation changed dramatically after he met his billionaire godmother, but these few early books about his hardscrabble life "down below" and his introduction to Koko and Yum Yum have a special charm for the season.

The weather has been both unsettled and uncivil over much of the US and Europe in the run up to Christmas this year. Shopping and traveling plans have been disrupted, and shoppers are scrambling for those last few items even as airlines frantically reschedule and reroute.

I hope that your plans and homes are not in too much disarray; if they are, remember just how much disarray the original cause of this celebration brought to the unsuspecting world! Joy and peace to all this season, and whether you are shopping or mopping, wrapping or cooking today, try to find a little time to be kind to yourself as well. Merry Christmas, all!

What they said...

Dog Days

The first Canadian book to sell over a million copies, Beautiful Joe, by Margaret Marshall Saunders, was the fictionalized autobiography of a real abused dog that had been rescued by friends of the author. Despite its dated style and sermonizing, it has rarely been out of print since its first publication in 1893. It and Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, the fictionalized autobiography of a mistreated horse, have probably been responsible for passage of many of the (still grossly inadequate) humane animal treatment laws throughout the United States and Canada. Many thousands of animal rescue workers and volunteers have been influenced and inspired by these books. I wept copiously over both of them in my childhood, and I still have a strong interest in both rescue work and authentically portrayed animals in my reading.

Donna Ball has written a series of interesting and informative dog mysteries about a Search and Rescue tracker in the lovely North Carolina mountains. In the first, Smoky Mountain Tracks, Raine Stockton had resigned from the S&R Service after the painful loss of her beloved and reliable tracking dog Cassidy. When her ex-husband Deputy Sheriff Buck Lawson asks for her help in tracking a missing child and mother, she takes the young half-trained Cisco, who finds not the missing pair, but the body of a drug dealer who may have kidnapped them. While the characters could use more development, the plot, setting, and training details make this series of novellas worth following.

Rottweiler Rescue is an easy reading one-off cozy by author Ellen O'Connell, who has rescued these fearsome looking but usually gentle giants for many years. When rescuer Dianne Brennan takes one of her fostered rotties to meet a potential adopter, she literally runs into the adopter's murderer on the back steps of the house, thereby becoming his next target.

The plot and pacing are good, and Dianne's handling of her rescued animals and their problems is a realistic and respectful presentation of rescue work. The dogs, while central to the story, thankfully do not talk or solve the mystery, as happens in many of the uber-cutesy animal cozies. I would enjoy reading more of these intelligent adventures.

Into Darkness, the maiden novel of award-winning screenwriter and director Jonathan Lewis, may be the most stunning and disturbing dog mystery I have read. Months later, the story still haunts me. Sir Tommy Best was a legend––both a world-famous actor and a blind man; as noted for his philanthropies as his superb acting skills. He went nowhere without his devoted and intelligent guide dog, Suzy. One morning Sir Tommy is found drowned in the stinking mud at the bottom of a dock, having fallen or been pushed through a gap in the walkway above, and Suzy is nowhere nearby. She is finally found several miles away in obvious shock, her harness torn and dragging. Sir Tommy's wife, a famous actress, is sure that he was murdered––Suzy's skill and fidelity would never have let him come to harm.

The only witness is the mute and traumatized guide dog. What happened to the thousand pounds that Sir Tommy had withdrawn from the bank that afternoon, and how is the burnt match with a bit of strange blood at the tip connected to the crime? DCI Ned "the Yid" and WPC Kate "the Dog Tart" Baker have a puzzling and horrifying case to solve in this semi-noir, occasionally darkly humorous procedural. The author's film background is apparent in the tight writing and the highly visual, sometimes claustrophobic scenes.

Rescue Rage is a potent and terrible condition that affects almost all animal rescuers at one time or another. When compassion has been wrung into harrowed and quivering exhaustion, sometimes that righteous fury is the only thing that drags one out of the house to minister to the never-ending parade of neglected, abandoned, and abused creatures. Behind that serene demeanor, your average rescue worker sometimes crafts and relishes fantasies of mayhem and murder that would appall practitioners of the Spanish Inquisition.

At such times, Rebecca Stroud's short e-book Do Unto Others is a highly gratifying read. Homicide detective Amanda Silver, engaged to Kevin Monroe, the lead investigator of the newly formed Animal Cop unit, is investigating a series of murders that seem to have nothing in common except the use of veterinary drugs and the, um, very creative torture of certain of the victims. Stroud has worked in animal rescue for many years, and understands both the inadequacy of most humane protection laws and their lackadaisical enforcement very well. This gory well-written little gem is not for the weak of heart or stomach.

So what have you done this holiday season for the voiceless misused and abused creatures who share our world? There's still time to take food or old linens to a local shelter, or volunteer to walk a few dogs or clean some cages. The Humane Society and Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are desperate for funds that can be donated at their websites or by check. When times are tough and money tight, most often the pets go first––to shelters if their owners are responsible, or just tossed out and abandoned to fend for themselves. "Every man is a hero to his dog." Would that every pet owner were worthy of that devotion. Peace and prosperity enough to share to all in the coming year!