A Wife in A Million by Val McDermid- in which a disgruntled wife is, instead of handing out holiday cheer, out slipping a little arsenic into grocery items and DS Maggie Staniforth is on the case and dealing with her own disgruntled wife.

This is a good collection, part of a series of anthologies put together to bring seasonal stories into one book, or seven. And even though I am a big fan of Rankin and I enjoyed 'No Sanity Clause', my favourite was the story from Lawrence Block which did not contain an actual murder, but described a mystery nevertheless. Now, can anyone recommend me a good Christmas themed horror/thriller/mystery as this got my hopes right up and dropped me down faster than you can say ‘Santa with his head chopped off!It's notable that the Father Brown story is probably the one that works as a pure murder mystery and is significantly longer than most of the others. It is the time of the year for wintery,Christmas stories and short stories are well adapted to represent the different aspects of the Christmas spirit. This one had a Sherlock Holmes feel to it, it’s about a rich man's club - The Santa Claus Club - where one of the members feels for his life. Possibly having as close a remit as crimes committed on one particular day is too limiting but I found the ten stories presented here lacklustre at best. However, I did enjoy The footprint in the sky, A wife in a million, The dagger with wings and Cambrice tea.

Overall I have enjoyed the book, and the 5 star stories, including the Ellis Peters one, The Trinity Cat, at the start, more than make up for the less good ones. Yet as these stories imagine there is no holiday period for detectives as this wonderful time of year throws up additional opportunities to commit crime.It usually takes rather more page count to be a success in this genre, but this collection, from big names in the field, manages to do the job well. Some of them seemed like they should have been longer but instead have been reduced, too densely packed for a good short story. The Doctor however finds out that the wife is is long lost love who left to be married, and that the sick man has discovered love letters sent between the two many years before.