January MysteryKIT Winter Mysteries

Welcome to the January, 2025 MysteryKIT!



The topic for this month is winter mysteries. Select a book with a wintry scene on the cover, a story that is set in winter months, an author with Winter in their name, or a book with Winter in the title. Other suggestions include settings related to winter or anything that reminds you of winter.

Think about winter activities, foods and beverages related to winter, holidays in winter, or anything else that fits the mysterious topic. Don't forget that winter in the southern hemisphere looks different from up north! Just be sure the story includes a mystery, since this is MysteryKIT.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking about possibilities. (Some of these are set at the Christmas holidays, but that is not required for this challenge. However, you might be able to do a "CAT trick" since some of these books fit with other challenges!)

British Crime Library selections, such as Crimson Snow
Christmas Cookie Murder and Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier
Dead and Gondola by Ann Claire
Feliz Navidead by Ann Myers
Gingerdead House by Nancy Warren (Great Witches' Baking Show)
Gingerdead Man by Maya Corrigan
God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen by Rhys Bowen
A Holiday Yarn by Sally Goldenbaum
Homicide for the Holidays by Cheryl Honigford
Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie
A Midwinter's Tail by Sofie Kelly
Mrs. Jeffries and the Alms of the Angel by Emily Brightwell
Murder for Christmas by Agatha Christie
Mystery at the Ski Jump by Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew)
A Noel Killing by M.L. Longworth
Santa Cruise by Mary Higgins Clark
Sleep in Heavenly Pizza by Mindy Quigley
Stockings and Spells by Nancy Warren (Vampire Knitting Club)
The Usual Santas Forward and Contributor Peter Lovesey
Various titles by Anne Perry
Winter Witches of Holiday Haven by Erin Johnson (if you like a little paranormal)

Remember to update the wiki! https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2025_MysteryKIT

I'm going with Cold Storage, Alaska.

I will try Murder Most Actual by Alexis Hall, where the sleuths and suspects are snowed in while weekending at a Scottish castle.

Planning to read Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson.

Not sure yet what I'll read, but I like this theme!

I'm planning on The Spy Coast .

Winter is my favourite season, so looking forward to choosing a book for this.

I am planning on reading The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley where a group are snowed in at a Hunting Lodge and murder makes an appearance.

I've set aside Les chiens de Riga (The Dogs of Riga) by Henning Mankell. Set in Latvia, it starts with "It began to snow at around 10:00 am." so I'm guessing a nice Northern European icy winter.
It's the second book featuring Inspector Kurt Wallander.

The covers of these are wintery and they both have the tag "winter" (one is larger than the other), so my options appear to be:

- Rock, Paper, Scissors / Alice Feeney
- Breaking Silence / Linda Castillo

>1 LadyoftheLodge: I recommend "The Usual Santas", an anthology of Christmas-themed stories edited by Peter Lovesey.

>11 Dave_Perry: Thank you! I will add that to the list at the top.

Hope to read Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg.

>11 Dave_Perry: I second that recommendation!

I plan on reading Running out of time by Suzanne Trauth.

I have already started my new reading year and I read An English Murder by Cyril Hare. It is a Christmas mystery with lots of snow. I really enjoyed it!

I really don't like winter, but I do have a few books set around Christmas time. I'm thinking of reading either I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, by Alan Bradley (a Flavia de Luce mystery), or Rest You Merry, by Charlotte MacLeod (first book in her Peter Shandy series).

I am reading Rock, Paper, Scissors by Alice Feeney. Looks awfully cold on the cover, and who doesn't want to read about a winter weekend get away to Scotland!

I had thought of Murder Most Actual by Alexis Hall would fit for this KIT but despite the characters being snowed in, it does take place over the Easter weekend, so not really winter.

I might read several. Currently listening to Snowblind and currently reading A Chill Rain in January.

I read Rupert Latimer's Murder after Christmas, in which a dead body is discovered on Boxing Day. Recommended for vintage mystery lovers!

>19 Robertgreaves: Can Easter still technically fall in Winter? What's the earliest in March it can be?

Being snowed in seems wintery enough to me, but that's just me. :-)

>22 LibraryCin: Easter can occur as early as March 22 and Spring starts around March 21st. >19 Robertgreaves: I agree that being snowed in is wintery enough to qualify.

>23 lowelibrary: Ahhh, thank you. Technically just a day or so late to officially be winter!

>22 LibraryCin: >23 lowelibrary: By definition Easter Sunday must fall after the Spring Equinox so the earliest possible date is 22 March. According to Wikipedia the last time that happened was 1818.

I've read Tales from the Gas Station: Volume Two, which is a sci-fi-horror-comedy series that includes several mysteries, such as how a serial killer keeps coming back to life and escaping capture, and what happened to the missing part-time gas station employee. This book is set in Winter, with blizzards at pivotal scenes.

Christmas Mourning by Andrea Frazer
A snowstorm and power outage cuts off a small village from investigating the murder of a disliked, abusive man who insisted on playing Father Christmas for local children. A second murder of an elderly cleric adds to the difficult investigation for the two police officers unable to get help. This was a poorly written farce that some well-chosen humour would have improved but instead it was a bit silly.

As someone who doesn't care for cold and snow, I went with a Southern hemisphere winter mystery: Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson, and I took great delight in the occasional line about "Christmas is going to be a scorcher this year."

I read Death on a Winter's Day which is set in Scotland and it is very wintry. The ending was rather unbelievable, but still a fun read. It had a twisty ending, which I did not see coming!

>28 KeithChaffee: LOL! That just seems odd to me! I'm in Canada, and though we seem to have more brown Christmas's than we used to, I was in Louisiana once at the end of November/beginning of December and it seemed out of place to see all the Christmas decorations and it be so warm!

>30 LibraryCin: You are reminding me of I got roller skates (I am aging myself) and my kids got ice skates at Christmas. I was raised in West Texas and married a Minnesotan so I live in Minnesota.

>31 mnleona: LOL! it's fun either way, but yes definitely a different south vs north for the type of skates at Christmas!

Reading The Case of the Headless Jesuit, which starts on New Year's Eve. It's set in England, so it's winter.

Summer in Australia. Just had two days of 38C (about 100F) but the cool change is here.

>33 pamelad: Oh, heavens, of course it is. And don't I feel stupid for not realizing that. Ah well, back to the drawing board...

>33 pamelad: That is hot; try to stay cool. I visited Australia years ago and loved it

Starting Speculations in Sin by Jennifer Ashley, which to start with at least takes place in January 1883

COMPLETED Speculations in Sin by Jennifer Ashley, set in January 1883

Completed The Spy Coast - By Tess Gerritsen, set in wintery Maine for the most part.

I just completed Blood Mountain by Alisa Valdes which is set during a snowstorm in the New Mexican wilderness.

Chill Factor by Sandra Brown ★★½

Five women are missing from the sleepy mountain town of Cleary, North Carolina, and a blue ribbon has been left near where each woman was last seen. Lilly Martin has returned to Cleary to close the sale of her cabin. But when her car skids and strikes a stranger, Ben Tierney, as he emerges from the woods, they’ve no choice but to wait out a brutal blizzard in the cabin. As the hours of their confinement mount, Lilly wonders if the greater threat to her safety isn’t the storm, but the stranger beside her... (description from the back of the book)

This book started out jumping between scenarios and characters and was quite confusing, this style continues throughout the book but becomes a little more clear as you get used to the writing style and come to know the characters. There was too much going on and the jumping around does not help the story at all. I could not find one character (all the men are pr**ks) to enjoy or to have a redeeming quality. While the end of the book contained some surprises, it did not redeem the story at all.

I read this for January MysteryKIT - Winter Mysteries and with this taking place on a mountain in the middle of a snowstorm, it fits the category perfectly.

This time, I picked one that actually is set in winter -- Italy in January -- Dead Men Don't Ski by Patricia Moyes.

I read A Chill Rain in January by L. R. Wright, the third book in a series set in Sechelt, British Columbia, on the Sunshine Coast where winter is milder than other parts of Canada. It's not my favorite type of mystery since, like in the TV series Columbo, you know who the murderer is from the beginning. It's a psychological mystery and the suspense comes from whether or not the police are going to figure out whether there's been a crime and whether the murderer will be caught.

>42 cbl_tn: I just read the first of that series and really enjoyed it.

Read The Knife before Christmas

I also read Due or Die by Jenn McKinlay, the second book in the Library Lover's Mysteries series. It is set in January and features a heavy snowstorm.

I have finished The Looking Glass War, a spy thriller which begins on a snowed-in airfield in Norway and ends in cold December in East Germany.

Febuary's Thread is up: https://www.librarything.com/topic/367651#

Rock Paper Scissors / Alice Feeney
4 stars

Amelia and Adam have been having trouble in their marriage. When Amelia wins a trip at work to head to Scotland to stay in an old isolated church, she jumps at the chance, hoping the two of them can start to repair their marriage. They drive through a snowstorm to get there and the church is locked. It’s cold, and dark, and they were lucky to not be killed on the drive, due to the road conditions. There are creepy things happening all around. Meanwhile, Robin lives in a small cottage nearby. Robin is a hermit and rarely goes into town. Amelia and Adam don’t know she’s there, but she is keeping a very close eye on the two of them.

We read the story from the viewpoints of all three characters. In addition, we back up in time to read letters written to Adam on their anniversary every year and we can see where things have been going wrong. There were definitely creepy bits and there were a few twists at the end; I don’t think I saw any of them coming.

One by One by Ruth Ware
I really enjoyed this one, set in a ski resort in the Alps. It became more exciting as it went along and I couldn’t bear to put it down.

I chose The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year from my Kindle TBR. Set in an English country estate during a blizzard, this is perfect for the wintry mystery challenge. It is a mashup of a locked room cozy mystery and an enemies-to-lovers romance. The banter is funny, but gets tiresome after a bit. The mystery kept me guessing with some interesting twists along the way.

I have finished Les Chiens de Riga (The Dogs of Riga) by Mankell. This is where Wallander meets Baiba who we will see in future books. The story is set in the aftermath of the Cold War and in the heart of winter, so it's doubly cold and dangerous. A great suspense and espionage thriller!

I read Whiteout by Ken Follett.
I enjoyed reading this years ago and tried it again for this CAT theme. I still found it an exciting fast-paced thriller. The pandemic we have experienced in the interim gave me a better appreciation of the battle against bioterrorism.

I have finished a re-read of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and was surprised to find that Smiley’s trawling through the Circus file is set in December, shortly before Christmas.

I'm listening to Rain Dogs - he mentions the chilly temps and the snow, so it must be winter. This is book 5 in the Sean Duffy series, and it's a re-listen for me.

Harrow the Ninth

I feel like I'm cheating counting this one, as it doesn't really take place on Earth/in winter, but snow and ice surround the mystery of the story, so I'm counting it anyway!

Wow. I LOVED this book. What to say about it that doesn't spoil the ending of the last one? There was necromancy, bone magic, space travel, ghosts, action, horror, mystery (although this is not a 'traditional' mystery series where it opens on a murder or discovery of a body and then progresses as the detective(s) try to solve the murder, there still very much is mystery in this series to be had!), and very intriguing characters & character interactions. The main characters of this series are lesbians, if that sweetens the pot for anyone. If this description interests you, check out the first book (Gideon the Ninth) and be careful for spoilers!

I read The Sittaford Mystery, in which a very snowy Dartmoor is the setting of the mystery.

I read The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman which takes place mostly in the week between Christmas and New Year's.

I finished Snowblind. It's set in a small town/village in northern Iceland in December & January. At one point, the town is cut off from the outside world by an avalanche. I'm drawn to mysteries in unusual locations, so the location is a win. However, it's a first in series book and the writing is flawed. Also, the policeman protagonist discovers clues that the author deliberately withholds from the reader. I hate that in a mystery. I might give the series one more try to see if the writing improves as the author gets more experience.

One of the truly great winter mysteries: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie, in which Poirot is on a snowbound train in the Balkans with a dead body and thirteen suspects.

>59 NinieB: I reas this when I was 13 and remember it like it was yesterday! I think this is the book that got me hooked on Agatha Christie!

>60 Cecilturtle: I first read it when I was about that age too! It's not a solution you forget.

I read The Christmas murder game