This review is written with thanks to Mulholland Books, an imprint of Hodder and Stoughton, for my copy of The Deaths Of December.
When Detective Constable (DC) Becky Greene opens the post in the mail room at the police station, she finds an advent calendar. But this is no ordinary advent calendar: it has the picture of a crime scene behind every door. Convinced this is more than just a prank, Becky and her partner, Detective Sergeant (DS) Eddie Carmine set about discovering more about the crime scenes, the earliest of which is from a murder that took place twenty years ago. Can Becky and Eddie find the perpetrator before he claims another victim?
I came across Holliday's writing when I read her short story in this year's Crime Writer's Association anthology. I vowed then that I would read her work again soon, and I was delighted to be given the opportunity to read The Deaths Of December. The writing style in this novel is more informal than I would usually expect from a police procedural, but I enjoyed this aspect of it, as it helped me to learn more about the "human" side of Becky and Eddie, and become more invested in their characters.
The premise of The Deaths Of December is one I found very interesting. The unusual methods of the perpetrator drew me into this novel, and I could not stop reading until they had been brought to justice. As Holliday also includes chapters told from the murderer's point of view, this gave me more insight into their mindset, which made me even more determined to see Becky and Eddie succeed. Allowing the reader to know the perpetrator's thoughts and movements ahead of the investigating police officers increases the tension, and as the novel reaches its climax, there is a particularly hair raising scene that pinned me to the edge of my seat!
​I am not sure if Holliday has a sequel to The Deaths Of December planned, but I would like to see Becky and Eddie's partnership develop and I believe there is sufficient opening in the ending for this to happen.

Intriguing story based around Christmas time. Lots of twists and turns keeping you in suspense until the very end.

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This isn't your traditional festive novel. DC Becky Greene picks up the post at work and in it is an advent calendar with a picture of a murder crime scene behind each door. Yet 4 doors have been left blank. Becky and her superior, Eddie have to try to find the cold cases, find the murderer and try to prevent the 4 murders from filling up the advent calendar.

I always enjoy a crime thriller and festive novels.. so mix the two together and I'm a happy bunny. I really enjoyed this book. There were parts that were a bit predictable hence the 4 instead of 5 stars but it was an easy flowing read and I would definitely recommend it.

A good read. A grisly festive read! Would recommend

I would like to thank Netgalley, Hodder Stoughton, Mulholland Books and Susi Holliday for the opportunity to read this novel in return for my honest review.

Although I have not read anything from this author before I will be seeking out her other novels. I was drawn to the book because of the time of year and the description of the storyline. I was not disappointed.

The police receive a home made advent calendar with photographs of murder scenes behind each number. DS Eddie Carmine realises that at least one of the photographs is a murder he has worked on which remains unsolved. His partner DC Becky Green works with him to unearth the murder scenes and a pattern emerges which Eddie realises has some connection to him.

As the plot develops, so do the characters and the narrative from different viewpoints was realistic and thoroughly enjoyable. Reading this in the run up to Christmas added to the enjoyment.

Highly recommended.

Brilliant. Really well written and action packed. Another great book by Susi Holliday. I really enjoyed this book. The idea of the advent calendar and the plot are brilliant and original and so cleverly written. Eddie and Becky are likeable characters who I would love to read more about.

Took me a while to get into this book then found it ok. Ending was a little disappointing

As we drew ever closer to the end of 2017 I have seen dozens and dozens of Christmas novels being discussed and reviewed. None appealed to me. Crime thrillers tend not to be seasonal affairs and I don’t enjoy books like The Cozy Gingerbread-Latte Cafe on Mistletoe Lane (in Cornwall).

You do get plenty of crime books set in the winter months, the dark wet conditions seem perfect for masking foul deeds. However, there are not many crime novels which focus the plot around Christmas.

My Christmas book apathy soon changed when I first heard about Susi Holliday’s The Deaths of December. Once I had read the outline (as above) I could not wait for the chance to read TDoD. The police receive a homemade advent calendar. Behind the doors is a photograph of a murder scene – some are immediately identifiable to DS Eddie Carmine as they are investigations he as been working on. Is he being pranked by his colleagues? How would a stranger access what seem to be crime scene photographs? Only the police should have pictures of multiple murders no individual could assemble such a macabre collection of images – unless that individual was present at each murder. Could there be a serial killer at work?

Caramine and his colleague DC Becky Green must first try to establish the authenticity of the pictures, then identify where and when they were taken. As they start to pull together more information it becomes obvious they are facing a challenge quite unlike anything they have encountered before. It makes for totally engrossing reading!

I have enjoyed each of Susi’s previous novels and in 4 years of blogging she has consistently retained my vote for the best author at capturing the essence of characters. In her Banktoun Trilogy each character was wonderfully realised and that remains the case in The Deaths of December. Every person in TDoD feels important to the plot, their contributions seem natural and the dialogue between characters has an authenticity that many writes do not seem to be able to capture. These believable/realistic characters make it so much easier to fall into the story and be taken along with events – nothing seems forced or jarred.

Narration is handled by multiple characters and each contributor seemed to have a personal voice. The story flows really well and the moving viewpoint kept me turning pages. I do love a serial killer story and this one is a cracker (no Christmas pun intended).

With Christmas looming The Deaths of December should be required reading for the cold winter evenings. Loved this a lot and I am sure you will too.

This book would have been 4 stars, but I felt that the ending didn't tally with the book all the way through, the rest of the book was so much better! It felt a little rushed at the end.

That being said I did enjoy the majority of the story, it was intriguing and paced well so was a smooth read, the jumps between characters were well handled and flowed easily.

Definitely not a merry Christmas for the characters in this book! A well written dark and twisted read

I was intrigued by the description of the plot. The idea of a serial killer delivering an Advent calendar to the police in order to link and draw attention to his crimes grabbed me.
This was the first book that I have read by Susi Holliday and I was very impressed. I like her writing style. The characters were well drawn and very engaging. It was a tense, nail biting thriller with a neat twist at the end, which was completely unexpected. It is an excellent police procedural and I would certainly recommend this book.

Started off with promise and held my interest for the moan , however after finding out who the killer is I felt the book then was dragged out too long . Overall an enjoyable read . Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my copy

I absolutely love reading Christmas books but they are usually chick lit ones, however when I saw the cover for this, which completely beckoned me, I decided to give it a go.

Suffice to say, I'm so glad that I did. It was a thoroughly entertaining read, love the police procedural element, as always gives you an interesting and different insight to the story. The story was also told by other characters outside of the police force which also gave the story depth and background.

This was a great story, which was well told and very cleverly done, the characters were all very well written and I really enjoyed getting to know all of them.

I do hope that the author Susi will be making this into a series as I love to see Becky and Eddie feature in future books for sure.

The Deaths of December has an inventive and intriguing premise and Becky and Eddie are engaging enough lead characters. There were some good twists and turns with how some of the wider characters related to each other and there were some amusing parts to lighten a dark story.

My gripe unfortunately was the killer: for almost half the book you pretty much know who and why and how - and I found the the why to be a real stretch. The ending itself was a little unsatisfactory, with a couple of barely mentioned characters making a reappearance, so I wonder if this will be the start of a series.

Grumble aside, this is an easy festive read and I would recommend to those who would like a police procedural with an original serial killer. With thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the ARC of The Deaths of December.

I’m getting to be quite the audio book demon at the moment as I listened to rather than read this wonderful gem of an anti-Christmas book. By anti-Christmas, I don’t mean that everyone in the book hates the festive season, although some had reason to more than most. I simply meant that with a murderer in the hot seat, it was far from a case of peace and goodwill to all – just how I like it.

The basic premise of the book? Well, the police receive a mysterious gift addressed to no-one and everyone, a home made advent calendar where behind each window lies a festive scene with a difference. Each scene depicts a murder, but as to who the victims are and why the police have been sent the calendar, this falls to Detective Sergeant Eddie Carmine and DC Becky Greene to find out. With several windows left blank, they have a race against the clock to stop the killer before they can finish their game. How far the killer will go Carmine and Green have no idea, but the killer could be a lot closer to home than either of them can possibly realize. Tense and chilling this is a perfect antidote to those dreading the happy festive period.

I was intrigued from the very start by this book. Not just because the central characters, Carmine and Greene exchange pleasantries in McDonalds and I was, at the time, fairly hungry and could have happily hoofed down a McMuffin. There was just something about the characters which captured my attention, and as Greene returned to the station and discovered the calendar, from there on in I was hooked. Told from several points of view, namely those of the Detectives, a woman called Carly and ‘The Photographer’, readers are taken on one heck of a journey, not always pleasant, often tense but undoubtedly entertaining. Each character brought about different emotions or feelings in me as a reader. Take Carly for example, frustrated by her life and the lack of love from her husband, a woman who I could feel great sympathy for. The overbearing mother who never listened, the children who have all but outgrown her, the husband who is never there … There is more to Carly and her story than meets the eye, and the author does a brilliant job of drip feeding this information into the narrative.

Then you have the Detectives, Carmine and Greene. Both are facing an element of uncertainty in their personal lives, not enough to impact their investigation, but enough to keep them interesting. Greene is young and astute and I instantly liked her. Carmine is older and perhaps more cynical, but he has a surprising connection to the killer. There is a reason that they chose that particular police station to send their calendar to, all they need to work out is why. They make a really good team, feeding off each other, and it’s a partnership I was more than happy to follow.

And there there is ‘The Photographer’. They have their reasons for killing people, at least in their own mind. The justification is weak at best, deranged at worst, but I can understand the devolution of their mind and I think this was portrayed quite sympathetically in the story. It comes to a point though, where even they don’t fully understand their actions, where they realize that a hypothetical line has been crossed, one from which there really is no return. I can almost feel sympathy for their situation but not empathy or forgiveness for their actions.

I loved the story which developed, the plotting tight enough to keep me completely focused on the action. There are moments where I could feel my nerves jangling as the level of peril for certain characters increased. The whole feeling of danger surrounding the two Detectives was off the scale towards the end of the book. And I particularly loved the nod to one of my favourite TV shows of the late nineties. I instantly recognised the names and it was with a slight smile on my face that I listened on (or technically turned the page as I read that actual chapter) and found myself faced with what I already expected.

All in all I found this was a really great book and a fabulous way to avoid celebrating Christmas cheer. Works for me. It wasn’t entirely without a hint of a happy ending, but that was just a side order to an industrial sized feast of a serial killer story. Loved it.

This is such an intriguing book at the start, an Advent calendar delivered to a police station, but not like any sort we would be used to seeing.  Upon realising that the pictures are actual crime scene images, the hunt begins to identify the crime scenes and the bodies as well as the identity of the killer.  It is the job of DI Becky Greene and her boss DS Eddie Carmine to discover who is behind this macabre calendar, along with other members of the police.

Wow, what a concept, what a story, what a book! I loved the angle with the calendar and the fact that the story is told via four people, Becky, Eddie, Carly and the photographer.  As the story develops, so does that of the characters and who they are and what they do.  Only the photographer is told in the first person and this adds so much more to the character and what is in their mind and thoughts. It is well laid out so that when the story flits between the characters there is no confusion, they compliment each other.

Then midway through .......blindsided or what !?! I did not see that one coming.  Suzi has thrown in an amazing plot twist that actually made me shout, enough to make the dogs jump and get them barking, which in turn made me jump, scaring the hell out of me, talk about the unexpected plot twist !  What a beauty it is, a deeply twisted, festive murder, thriller, mystery with a good psychological twist to it.  

There was a lot I loved about this book, the dynamics between Becky and Eddie, as well as some of the other characters in the police station.  A glimpse into their individual families and a brief look at their own personal story.  There is the suggestion of there being more to these two particular characters than meets the eye, and I would be interested to read more about these two.  (HINT, HINT Suzi :) )

This is a deliciously deep, twisted festive delight.  A book that highly recommend to readers of thriller, crime, mystery, suspense and murder. 

Oh, almost forgot, I loved the TV show that is mentioned in the book.  I though t it was blooming brilliant.

A serial killer named 'The Photographer' is taunting the police with an advent calendar, inside the doors are photographs of crime scenes taken over 20 years, always in December. Four doors are empty. With only 9 sleeps until Christmas Day does this mean he is about to strike again?
The book is written through different perspectives, The Photographer, Detectives Greene and Carmine and Carmines wife Carly. It flows well enough but lacks suspense, it unfolds too easily and the ending seemed somewhat rushed. Having said that, the way is left open for a sequel which I would probably read because I liked the rapport between Becky and Eddie.

I always look forward to the beginning of December and opening my advent calendar. I might not this year. Susi Holliday's The Deaths of December follows detectives Eddie Carmine and Becky Greene (good festive colour names!) as they try to track down a serial killer following the delivery of a rather macabre advent calendar to their office. Behind the doors of this calendar aren't cute robins, wise men travelling on donkeys or shiny stars but crime scenes. And not just pictures, but photographs of actual crime scenes. It seems that a serial killer has been carrying out murders for the past twenty years, with twenty crime scene photos behind the calendar doors. With four doors without victims, can the police track the killer before there are another four photos to fill the remaining days?

The Deaths of December was a book which started off as an intriguing read for me as the detectives began to realise that this was not an elaborate hoax. Before long though I found it a real page-turner as Carmine and Greene uncovered more clues and got closer to catching up with the killer. Chapters from the point of view of 'the photographer' were  very creepy and gave a whole different perspective on the story. There was more than one jaw-dropping revelation in the book which took the story spinning off in a direction I didn't expect, making it very personal for the detectives. I have to say that Susi Holliday's characterisation is excellent throughout the book with all of the characters feeling completely realistic whether police, potential victim or the killer.

This is certainly not a cosy Christmas story with snow falling, twinkly lights and a happy ever after ending for the hero and heroine. But if you are a fan of police procedurals and are looking for a darker read this Christmas you won't be disappointed. I'm not sure if Susi Holliday is planning this to be the beginning of a new series but I would love to read more about Carmine and Greene so I do hope so.

I thoroughly enjoyed this gripping detective thriller. It had me hooked from the first page and I couldn’t put it down. I loved the alternating chapters told from the different characters viewpoints and really liked the two main detectives and the insight into their personal life’s. I certainly hope this is the first in a promising new series and look forward to reading the next one.

AN ADVENT CALENDAR WITH A DIFFERENCE

I've read books by this author before and really enjoyed them so was excited when I saw she'd released a new one.

When DC Becky Greene arrives at work on 16th December and is handed the post including an envelope marked 'To A Detective who knows what to do' written on it, she's not prepared for its contents, she opens it and finds what appears to be a regular advent calendar, until she starts opening the windows and discovers that behind each one is a crime scene, including one of the crimes they are currently working on. Is it a prank by one of her fellow officers or something much more sinister? Becky and her partner DS Eddie Carmine soon discover they are looking for a serial killer and need to act quickly before any more deaths take place, but with not much to go on they are struggling.

This book was slow to start but soon picked up the pace and had me hooked. It is a very dark and twisted plot showing what lengths a person can and will go to, to exact revenge and I do think the ending leaves it open for a sequel, so let's watch this space.

I would like to thank Hodder & Stoughton Mulholland Books for the approval. I will post my review on Goodreads and Amazon and share on Twitter.