The Christmas Egg by Mary Kelly

The Christmas Egg (A Seasonal Mystery) is a classic crime novel that was not for me. It's rare to find a novel so unappealing—all the pieces were there, but I was done in by the endless talk and a sluggish pace.

Days before Christmas, an old woman is found dead in her squalid rented room. Neighbors thought her slightly unbalanced, but she had once been Princess Olga Karukhina, who fled palatial luxuries for London in the wake of the Revolution. Her grandson Ivan shared the room, a perpetual drunkard, from whom she hid her chest of priceless jewels and icons, a rare French record, and even an enameled Fabergé egg—all now disappeared. It could be another in a string of burglaries by the notorious Hampstead gang. The only clue for Detective Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes is the name on a piece of paper: AK Majendie, a jeweller to whom she sold a few pieces, who knows well her collection. Majendie's assistant is young Miss Cole, dating Geoffrey in the music store next door. While Beddoes tails Ivan, Nightingale unravels the crime with all points leading to Majendie. How they all get lost driving in the Kent countryside on Christmas Eve in a blinding snowstorm I will leave you to find out.

I was happy to finish this, but found it boring. Kelly's style is extremely verbose, and there was too much Russian history. Nightingale and Beddoes seem old friends who comment on all sorts that have nothing to do with the crime. The pace did me in.

Mary Kelly wrote ten books in seventeen years before stopping in 1974. The Christmas Egg was the third mystery featuring DCI Brett Nightingale after A Cold Coming and Dead Man's Riddle. A member of the prestigious Detection Club, she won the CWA Gold Dagger for The Spoilt Kill (1961).

1958 / Tradeback / 225 pages