Helpful Score: 2
There's not very much mystery to these Christmas stories by Anne Perry, and not much substance, but they are nice little vignettes of the side characters of her Pitt and Monk novels. In this volume, Emily Radley, sister of Charlotte Pitt, is called upon to spend Christmas with her estranged aunt Susannah in Ireland, who is dying. When Emily arrives there it soon becomes known to her that the small town is haunted by the 7-year old unsolved murder of a young sailor who washed up on their shores years ago. Susannah's ulterior motive in requesting Emily's companionship is the need for help in solving the old murder to relieve the town's gnawing doubts and suspicions of each other, which is slowly killing them. Emily readily agrees, as she comes to love not just her estranged aunt but also the town's warm and welcoming people.
