Mia P. Manansala’s Five Favorite Christmas-themed Mysteries

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Considering how much I write about murder, I’m surprisingly sappy around the Christmas season. I enjoy cooking for people, I love giving gifts, and I’m such a sucker for holiday romance movies that I’ve started an annual tradition with one of my closest friends where we create a holiday romance movie spreadsheet and then hold weekly streaming parties to get through as many as we can (and force our husbands to join us).

That’s right, there’s a Christmas romance movie spreadsheet. My friends don’t play.

For me, the holidays are a time for family, friends, and feasting, a time of hope, and a time of merriment. All the things I love. But I also know for many people, the holidays are also a time for capital D Drama, which makes them an excellent setting for books. But romance isn’t the only genre that gets to enjoy the magic of the holidays—there are a plethora of mysteries that use Christmas time for dramatic effect.

My newest book, Blackmail and Bibingka, takes advantage of the lead-up to Christmas (a huge holiday for Filipinos, with the Philippines holding the record for the longest Christmas season in the world) to explore themes of family and forgiveness, joy and jealousy, and the power of a really good karaoke party.

To celebrate Blackmail and Bibingka’s release, I made a list of my top 5 Christmas-themed mysteries, guaranteed to get you in a merry, murderous mood:

The Art of Theft: The Lady Sherlock Series by Sherry Thomas

The Lady Sherlock series is my current favorite series, and somehow each and every book that comes out (there’s six so far, with a seventh coming out next spring) is an absolute banger. The Art of Theft is the fourth book that follows our gender-bent protagonist, Charlotte Holmes, and is a bit of a departure from the previous books in that the case in question involves an art heist rather than murder. The glamor! The relationships! The intrigue! The continually raising stakes! I really love a dangerous ballroom scene, and while this book doesn’t include any sexy dancing (that I remember) there is more than enough scandal going on at this Christmas party to keep Charlotte and her crew busy. Come for the twisty mysteries, stay for the anguished yearning.

Wed, Read & Dead by V.M. Burns

The Mystery Bookshop Mysteries is the epitome of a cozy read to me: it follows Samantha Washington, who opens a mystery bookshop to fulfill the dream she and her deceased husband shared. One of the best things about this series (other than the absolutely delightful cast) is that each book features two mysteries in one: Samantha is also an aspiring mystery writer, so readers get to enjoy the contemporary murder mysteries that plague Samantha and her close-knit group, as well as snippets of the British historical mystery that she’s working on. This fourth book in the series is not only set around Christmas, but also a wedding, and we know what kind of drama weddings can bring!

Death in D Minor by Alexia Gordon

I love the Gethsemane Brown series, which follows a Black classical musician who moves to a small Irish village to start a quiet new life, only to befriend the ghost haunting her cottage and become an amateur sleuth in the process. While I love romance (if I hadn’t made that abundantly clear in my opening), I know it’s not for everyone, so this is a great series for those not interested in romantic relationships, but still invested in deep familial and platonic ties. The second book in the series has Gethsemane accidentally conjuring up the wrong ghost in order to save her brother-in-law, who stopped in for a visit and is now the main suspect for art theft and murder. A typical Christmas vacation, am I right?

The Glass Thief by Gigi Pandian

The Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt series is so much fun! We get to follow the intrepid, globe-trotting protagonist, Jaya Jones, as she solves present-day crimes linked to treasures from India’s colonial history. The sixth book in the series involves a locked room mystery (and if you don’t know, Gigi Pandian is the contemporary queen of the impossible crime), looted treasure from Cambodia, and an alleged ghost responsible for three unsolved murders over a seventy year timespan, each taking place right before Christmas.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Murder Under the Mistletoe (Season Two, Episode Thirteen)

OK, so this is a TV episode and not a book (though the show is based on the Phryne Fisher novels by Kerry Greenwood), but it is too good to not include on the list. This season two finale follows our lady detective and friends on a ski holiday for (Australian) Christmas in July. When Phryne arrives at the lodge, she learns about the “accidental” death of one of the workers. She suspects foul play and is soon proven right when another dead body turns up, but the police investigation hits a bit of a snag when a snowstorm traps everyone at the chalet, and the lodgers are murdered one by one to the theme of the Twelve Days of Christmas. 

Honorable mentions:

“The Dauphin’s Doll” by Ellery Queen

This is a short story recommended to me by S.A. Cosby. I wasn’t able to hunt down a copy of this story in time for this listicle, but he said it was his “favorite Ellery Queen story and it’s an impossible crime story as well” so I knew I had to include it on this list. Thanks for the rec, Shawn!

Peril & Prayer: A Sister Lou Mystery by Olivia Matthews

This was a book recommended to me by a fellow Crime Writers of Color member that I didn’t have time to read but have added to my holiday TBR.

What other mysteries should I add to my Christmas TBR? Also, I’d love to learn about more mysteries centered around non-Christian holidays, so if you have any recs, please let me know!

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