Christmas thrillers are different from Christmas mysteries. In thrillers, people try to stop something from happening – or cause it to happen. In mysteries, people try to solve how or why the event happened.
Yet whenever I search for Christmas thrillers, I’m directed to undoubtably excellent murder mysteries, often set in snowbound mansions in the countryside.
So I’ve put five Christmas thrillers in a category of their own, tales driven by tension, action and the ticking time bomb of the season. Full confession, one of them is mine:
- The Spy Who Came For Christmas by David Morrell
- No Way To Live by Anthony Addis
- The Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips
- The Usual Santas by Various Authors
- The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett
The Spy Who Came For Christmas by David Morrell
For me, this is almost an annual read by one of my favourite authors. He also introduced Rambo to the world in First Blood, and wrote a terrific, game-changing espionage thriller. In The Spy Who Came For Christmas, Kagan, an undercover agent, attempts to save the so-called child of peace, who symbolises how the Middle East could come together in harmony. But his enemies are ruthless, and follow him through the snowy streets of Santa Fe in New Mexico.
The setting is great, the villains believable and everytime I read it, the spy’s version of the Nativity is an absolute delight.
No Way To Live by Anthony Addis
She’s the most dangerous person he knows. And now he’s betrayed her.
Tom Adams is the son of a notorious London gangland enforcer. He tried to leave the life, but Billie, the boss’s daughter, dragged him back when she took over. When she decides to target an innocent shopkeeper and his daughter, Tom walks away again, betraying Billie and the complicated past they share. It might be the season of good will, but Billie isn’t the forgiving kind.
I wrote No Way To Live in a small, dark flat in Riyadh in the run up to Christmas 2020. Everything was locked down, I was away from my family and there were no Christmas trappings around. I decided to write the kind of Christmas book that I would want to read. A Christmas thriller with characters you care about. As a fan of Die Hard, I wanted the antagonist to be just as sympathetic as the protagonist. After all, who doesn’t secretly want Hans Gruber to win?
No Way To Live is available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
the Ice Harvest by Scott Phillips
The Ice Harvest was made into a film with John Cusack, which I have yet to see. The book is described as ‘white noir.’ Charlie Arglist has nine and a half hours to get out of Wichita, Kansas. But first, he has a few things to do…
It’s a bleak read, full of bleak, unpleasant characters, but it does feel like Christmas in gangland.
The Usual Santas by Various Authors
The Usual Santas is a short story collection featuring stories by a huge variety of writers, including Mick Herron and Peter Lovesey. There’s a whole host of different stories here, ranging from noir to historical fiction to heists. I read this one in the flat in Riyadh in 2020 and really enjoyed it for the variety and different takes on how to include elements of christmas in a story.
The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett
I’ve made one exception to the rule I mentioned in the introduction, because really The Christmas Appeal is a murder mystery. But like The Appeal, it is so clever and original I felt I had to include it. It’s a modern epistolary novel, written in emails and texts, with the variuous events being summarised every so often for the benefit of the reader. It’s cracking good fun, but I can’t help wondering if the idea of setting it within an amateur dramatics group that is putting on a pantomime might alienate it to non-British readers.
Further Reading
How No Way To Live was born in a flat in Riyadh
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