Reviews for A Christmas gathering : a novel

Publishers Weekly
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Set in Victorian England, bestseller Perry’s 17th Christmas mystery (after 2018’s A Christmas Revelation) is less rewarding than others in the series. Victor Narraway, from the author’s Thomas and Charlotte Pitt series, who has stepped down as the head of Special Branch, travels with his wife from London to the country estate of the Cavendishes, where they are to spend Christmas. Narraway is on a secret mission to take custody of “submarine blueprints, discreetly doctored,” so as to be unusable in actually developing such a vessel. Narraway is to pass the fakes on through British spy networks to Germany, in order to out a suspected traitor in the intelligence services. Twenty years earlier, Narraway had a similar assignment in Normandy that ended with the death of a young female Special Branch agent. History seems to repeat itself when someone attacks Iris Watson-Watt, a fellow guest at Cavendish Manor, after she passes the blueprints to him, leading Narraway to play sleuth to identify her assailant. An obvious villain disappoints. This is an unmemorable effort by a prolific author who is usually better. Agent: Donald Maass, Donald Maass Literary. (Nov.)


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Back from their adventures in Jerusalem (A Christmas Message, 2016), Lord Victor Narraway and his wife, Lady Vespasia, trudge dutifully to an obligatory holiday party in an English country house whose promised tedium is shattered by a violent attack.On the face of it, the four couples Max Cavendish and his wife, Lady Amelia, have invited for Christmas have nothing in common. Narraway, of course, is former head of Special Branch, an intelligence service with which Vespasia has also been repeatedly involved. Ex-military man Rafe Allenby is an explorer Vespasia's encountered on several foreign excursions that his wife, Rosalind, decided to skip. Dorian Brent and his wife, Georgiana, are moneyed do-nothings. Art restorer James Watson-Watt and his wife, Iris, are so much younger than the others that they seem to have wandered over from a different party. When Iris is attacked and left for dead sometime past midnight at the orangery of Cavendish Hall, a pile Lady Amelia inherited from her branch of the family, the general reactions are bewilderment and shock. But not Narraway's. He's come to the gathering specifically to collect some top-secret information about German submarines from Iris, who's working for Special Branch. Already haunted by his failure to protect another such courier from getting murdered at a house party in Normandy over 20 years ago, he can't help feeling that history is repeating itself, casting him once more as its weakest link. As James hovers over his unconscious wife's bedside and the assembled worthies soldier on without either notifying the police or disbanding ("For such an unfortunate event, one does not abandon one's friends," observes Vespasia), only one thing is certain: The mystery will be solved and the gathering uplifted just in time for Christmas.A hyperextended short story bulked up with flashbacks, petty social slights, and holiday cheer. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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