Rating: 
Summary: A nice Christmas gift
Review: This is a much shorter book than most of those from Anne Perry; it's a piece of light rewading for and about Christmas. The writer takes Aunt Vespasia, one the favourite characters from her Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series, and tells the story of one Christmas in her younger days. It isn't exactly a mystery story - a young woman commits suicide and her reasons for doing that seem obvious. But Anne Perry is master of digging beneath the obvious to find the truth beneath the truth.The result is a tale that flows from an elegant house party in a country mansion north to the frozen snowy wastes of Scotland (and Anne Perry lives in northern Scotland so we can assume she knows whereof she speaks). It's a pilgrimage of sorts, with Vespasia and her friend Isobel toiling through storms and snowdrifts to find the mother of the dead woman and, incidentally the truth behind the suicide. The only thing spoiling this good story is the overly moralistic tone that Anne Perry is increasingly becoming bogged down in. Of course you want characters with deep motivation - some pure, some mistaken, some evil - and the battle between good and evil always makes for good plot structure. But Anne Perry does tend to overdo it, leaving the reader wondering if she can stand being swamped beneath so many layers of virtue and morality.
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