Jerusalem Inn — Martha Grimes

A white Christmas couldn't make Newcastle any less dreary for Scotland Yard's Superintendent Richard jury-until he met a beautiful woman in a snow-covered graveyard. Sensual, warm, and a bit mysterious, she could have put some life into his sagging holiday spirit. But the next time Jury saw her, she was cold-and dead.

Melrose Plant, Jury's aristocratic sidekick, wasn't faring much better. Snowbound at a stately mansion with a group of artists, critics, and idle-but-titled rich, he, too, encountered a lovely lady... or rather, stumbled over her corpse. What linked these two Yuletide murders was a remote country pub where snooker, a Nativity scene, and an old secret would uncover a killer... or yet another death.