As Dark as Christmas Gets

In addition to the four novels (No Score, Chip Harrison Scores Again, Make Out With Murder, and The Topless Tulip Caper), Lawrence Block wrote two short stories about young Chip Harrison. Both take place after the four novels, and feature Chip (The Lecher in the Wry) as he is in the third and fourth books—i.e., the assistant of Leo Haig, a sort of road company Nero Wolfe. The first story, “Death of the Mallory Queen,” appeared in 1984; 13 years later, “As Dark as Christmas Gets," was written for a pamphlet that served as Otto Penzler’s Christmas gift. Every year Otto commissions a story from a writer of his acquaintance, with the sole requirement that the story be set in his establishment, The Mysterious Bookshop, and that it involve the crime or the threat of a crime. The story was subsequently published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

The story, deeply imbued with the mystique of the mystery community, involves a missing manuscript, and a cast of characters who may ring a bell or two, seasonal or otherwise. And, along with Harrison and Haig, the bookstore proprietor plays a vital role...


Genre: Mystery