The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, Ally Carter
Maggie Chase writes successful cozy mysteries. Ethan Wyatt writes hi-tech thrillers. Their writings certainly don't vibe, and neither do they. Maggie also hates Christmas because everything bad in her life that's happened to her has happened around Christmas, like her parents dying, finding out her husband was sleeping with her best friend, "little" things like that. Ethan's bigger than life and for some reason he keeps calling her "Marcie." So she's really excited when she's invited to a real English house party—yes, in England!—at the home of Eleanor Ashley, queen of the murder mystery genre (think Agatha Christie).
Except that Ethan is also an invited guest. Well, she'll put up with him to spend Christmas with Eleanor Ashley, not to mention an entire houseful of guests who don't seem to like Eleanor very much and resent the fact that these two Americans are crashing their party.
And then Eleanor vanishes. Everyone but Maggie thinks something bad has happened, but Maggie's sure this is a test. Eleanor wants to quit writing and retire, and this mystery is a way of working out her successor. The person who solves it will take over her series.
But if that's true, why is someone trying to kill her? And why is Ethan not the awful guy she thought he was?
There's a couple of blips in this: at one point Maggie gets a head injury and Ethan's all in a hurry to get her to a doctor, fearing a concussion, and next they're taking refuge from a snowstorm in a cottage and neither of them seem very worried at all. But most of all this was great fun.
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