Holidays - Fiction, Police Stories, Historical Fiction, Other Mystery Categories

A Christmas Beginning

Name: A Christmas Beginning
Author: Anne Perry
ISBN: 9780345502360

by Anne Perry

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Overview

Whatever the season, a new novel by bestselling author Anne Perry is always a wonderful gift, but her holiday novels are particularly special treats, and A Christmas Beginning is a deeply felt story of passion and redemption.

Superintendent Runcorn of Scotland Yard is spending Christmas on the wild and beautiful island of Anglesey off the north coast of Wales. On one of his solitary strolls, the lonely bachelor stumbles upon a lifeless body in the village churchyard. The unfortunate victim is quickly identified as Olivia Costain, the local vicar’s younger sister.

In life, Olivia had been a free spirit, full of charm and grace. For Runcorn, she is a haunting reminder of Melisande Ewart, the one woman he’s never been able to forget. Everyone on Anglesey is quick to insist that only a stranger to the island could have committed the heinous crime. But the evidence proves otherwise, and the unpopular work of discovering who among Olivia’s friends and neighbors–and numerous eligible suitors–is a ruthless killer falls to Runcorn. A plebian outsider in the drawing rooms of the snobbish local gentry, Runcorn never dreams that the key that will unlock the secrets of Olivia’s life and death may also, miraculously, open the door to a new future for himself.

From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author, Anne Perry

Anne Perry is the bestselling author of four earlier holiday novels–A Christmas Journey, A Christmas Visitor, A Christmas Guest, and A Christmas Secret–as well as two acclaimed series set in Victorian England–the William Monk novels and the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels–and five World War I novels. Anne Perry lives in Scotland. Visit her website at anneperry.net.

From the Hardcover edition.

Biography

Born in London in October 1938, Anne Perry was plagued with health problems as a young child. So severe were her illnesses that at age eight she was sent to the Bahamas to live with family friends in the hopes that the warmer climate would improve her health. She returned to her family as a young teenager, but sickness and frequent moves had interrupted her formal education to the extent that she was finally forced to leave school altogether. With the encouragement of her supportive parents, she was able to "fill in the gaps" with voracious reading, and her lack of formal schooling has never held her back.

Although Perry held down many jobs—working at various times as a retail clerk, stewardess, limousine dispatcher, and insurance underwriter—the only thing she ever seriously wanted to do in life was to write. (In her '20s, she started putting together the first draft of Tathea, a fantasy that would not see print until 1999.) At the suggestion of her stepfather, she began writing mysteries set in Victorian London; and in 1979, one of her manuscripts was accepted for publication. The book was The Cater Street Hangman, an ingenious crime novel that introduced a clever, extremely untidy police inspector named Thomas Pitt. In this way an intriguing mystery series was born…along with a successful writing career.

In addition to the Thomas and Charlotte Pitt novels, Perry crafts darker, more layered Victorian mysteries around the character of London police detective William Monk, whose memory has been impaired by a coach accident. (Monk debuted in 1990's The Face of a Stranger.) She also writes historical novels set during the First World War (No Graves as Yet, Shoulder the Sky, etc.) and holiday-themed mysteries (A Christmas Journey, A Christmas Secret, etc), and her short stories have been included in several anthologies.

Good To Know

Some fun and fascinating outtakes from our interview with Anne Perry:

The first time I made any money telling a story I was four and a half years old—golden hair, blue eyes, a pink smocked dress, and neat little socks and shoes. I walked home from school (it was safe then) with my lunchtime sixpence unspent. A large boy, perhaps 12 or 13, stopped me. He was carrying a stick and threatened to hit me if I didn't give him my sixpence. I told him a long, sad story about how poor we were—no food at home, not even enough money for shoes! He gave me his half crown—five times sixpence! It's appalling! I didn't think of it as lying, just escaping with my sixpence. How on earth he could have believed me I have no idea. Perhaps that is the knack of a good story—let your imagination go wild, pile on the emotions—believe it yourself, evidence to the contrary be damned. I am not really proud of that particular example!

I used to live next door to people who had a tame dove. They had rescued it when it broke its wing. The wing healed, but it never learned to fly again. I used to walk a mile or so around the village with the dove. Its little legs were only an inch or two long, so it got tired, then it would ride on my head. Naturally I talked to it. It was a very nice bird. I got some funny looks. Strangers even asked me if I knew there was a bird on my head! Who the heck did they think I was talking to? Of course I knew there was a bird on my head. I'm not stupid—just a writer, and entitled to be a little different. I'm also English, so that gives me a second excuse!

On the other hand I'm not totally scatty. I like maths, and I used to love quadratic equations. One of the most exciting things that happened to me was when someone explained non-Euclidean geometry to me, and I suddenly saw the infinite possibilities in lateral thinking! How could I have been so blind before?

Here are some things I like—and one thing I don't:

I love wild places, beech trees, bluebell woods, light on water—whether the light is sunlight, moonlight, or lamplight; and whether the water is ocean, rain, snow, river, mist, or even a puddle.

I love the setting sun in autumn over the cornstooks.

I love to eat raspberries, pink grapefruit, crusty bread dipped in olive oil.

I love gardens where you seem to walk from "room to room," with rambling roses and vines climbing into the trees and sudden vistas when you turn corners.

I love white swans and the wild geese flying overhead.

I dislike rigidity, prejudice, ill-temper, and perhaps above all, self-righteousness.

I love laughter, mercy, courage, hope. I think that probably makes me pretty much like most people. But that isn't bad.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Mystery author Perry returns to holiday fare (after last year's A Christmas Secret) and sends rumpled London policeman Runcorn to a lonely Welsh island for Christmas, where he gets pulled into the case of the murder of Olivia Costain, the town vicar's lively single sister. Runcorn employs his bare-knuckle investigative skills in interviewing Olivia's family and her various suitors, to the chagrin of the local constable, Sir Alan Faraday, whose pursuit Olivia rejected. Runcorn's modest, unflashy ways carry this moody, understated mystery. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Best-selling mystery author Perry continues her yearly Christmas offering (e.g., A Christmas Secret), this time featuring a character from her William Monk series, Superintendent Runcorn. Investigating the murder of a young woman, Runcorn finds himself distracted by the unlikely attentions of a former love interest. Unlike some of her previous Christmas tales, readers unfamiliar with Perry's mystery series may not be as drawn in. For all mystery collections.

—Rebecca Vnuk

Kirkus Reviews

'Tis the week before Christmas, and inquiry agent William Monk's ex-boss Supt. Runcorn, having decided to get as far away from his depressing London beat as possible, runs into a brutal murder on an isolated Welsh isle. Anglesey would be a perfect setting for the midwinter holidays if it weren't so bleak and lonely, and if Supt. Runcorn had someone he loved to celebrate with, and if it weren't the current home to Melisande Ewart, who antagonized her brother, John Barclay, by identifying the victim and testifying against the killer in one of Runcorn's cases. And, of course, if it weren't for the sudden death of Olivia Costain, the vicar's sister, sensitive and lively but widely accounted a bit of a child. Now the child, stabbed in the stomach, will never grow old. Sgt. Warner, the local constable, is clearly out past his depth, and Melisande's fiance Sir Alan Faraday, when he arrives from Caernarfon to take charge of the case, seems so intent on soothing troubled waters that he ignores the one fact clear to Runcorn from the beginning: that Olivia knew her killer and felt comfortable with him. The investigation is ill-paced, with repetitive rounds of questioning suddenly yielding climactic revelations for no good reason, and the murderer is negligible. Perry's fifth seasonal bouquet (A Christmas Secret, 2006, etc.) works best as a study of Runcorn's lower-class inhibitions and how he learns to deal with them.