The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

The Craft Review #1 "I am living in a GOTHIC THRILLER, after all."

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This is the first of my Craft Reviews. The review is free. If you’d like to read some thoughts about the craft that went into creating this story, why I think it works (or doesn’t) and join in the discussion (everyone’s opinion is valid), please consider subscribing. Next up, The Fall by Gilly Macmillan.

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Peter Swanson is one of my favourite crime fiction authors and this is the perfect novella for the Christmas season: short and clever enough to compete with the sherry. Ashley Smith, a Californian studying art in London, is invited to stay for Christmas by a fellow student, Emma Chapman. Emma is cool and posh; Ashley is clutzy, gauche and secretly shy - and very importantly for the story, an orphan. She jumps at the chance to stay with the Chapman family at their Cotswold manor house, Starvewood Hall, in Clevemoor, and whilst ‘chilled to the bones’ by Mrs Chapman, she is quickly infatuated by the large family and, in particular, Emma’s handsome brother, Adam, who may feel the same way about her.

The story is initially told in the form of diary entries written thirty years ago: Ashley gushes that she feels as if she’s in “the beginning of a romance novel, or else maybe a murder mystery.” Whilst the girls are in the Sheepfold pub, some of the drinkers point out how similar Ashley looks to a local teenager who was recently murdered; on the way home, a little drunk, a masked man emerges from the woods in front of her and runs his finger across his throat as if he’s going to slit hers…

The Christmas Guest has all the trappings of a cosy crime novel: an American innocent caught up in the machinations of sinister aristocracy, a Gothic mansion in a remote part of the countryside, lashings of suspense, a grisly crime and several slight-of-hand twists, all wrapped in nostalgia and glittering with faux Christmas cheer. If you still have presents to get for the adult readers in your life, this is the perfect stocking-filler chiller.

It is also classic Peter Swanson (spoilers ahead!),