In the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal, mystery writer Tom Nolan offered "a roundup of giftable whodunits, some with Christmas themes":
- A Christmas Guest by Anne Perry (Ballantine, $16.95), the third of her crime novels set in Victorian England during the holiday season. In this "satisfying tale" and "unexpected lesson about hope and honor and what love really means," Grandmama Ellison, a houseguest for the holidays in southeast England, tries to figure out who murdered another houseguest.
- Father Brown: The Essential Tales by G.K. Chesterton (Modern Library Classics, $12.95) contains 15 stories and an introduction by P.D. James. "With their pointed aphorisms, their intricate prose and their theological dimension, these tales--each centering on a case that Father Brown must solve--seem like gifts from a more civilized era."
- Philip Marlowe's Guide to Life edited by Martin Asher (Knopf, $14.95), "an irresistible pocket-sized compendium of sayings and descriptive passages from one of the most quotable of writers," Raymond Chandler.
- Discovering the Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade edited by Richard Layman (Vince Emery Productions, $19.95), "filled with essays and other material--e.g., pulp fiction of the time--that help us to grasp the full dimensions of Hammett's novel and John Huston's movie."
- Dashiell Hammett: Lost Stories edited by Vince Emery (Vince Emery Productions, $24.95), "21 tales never before published in an anthology or unavailable for decades."
- The Novels of Ross Macdonald by Michael Kreyling (University of South Carolina Press, $35), "in which this insightful scholar places the late author in the context of other West Coast myth-makers, some of whom helped to invent (and complicate) the California Dream."
- L.A. Noir: The City as Character by Alain Silver and James Ursini (Santa Monica Press, $19.95), "a photo-rich analysis of the way that crime movies have used Los Angeles."
- Behind the Mystery by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Hot-House Press, $29.95), a collection of interviews of 18 mystery writers, including Tony Hillerman, Donald Westlake, Sue Grafton, Robert B. Parker, Michael Connelly and others.
- The Best American Mystery Stories 2005 edited by Joyce Carol Oates (Houghton Mifflin, $14), "a solid collection" that leans "toward the gritty, the hard-boiled, the noir."
- Creature Cozies edited by Jill M. Morgan (Berkley, $23.95), an anthology of 12 stories "in which a dozen contemporary mystery writers tell tales in which their fictional characters encounter their authors' own real-life pets (photos included)."