In the picturesque village of Kibblesworth, DI Tom Stonem is dreaming of a quiet Christmas alone.

But in the shadow of the Angel of the North, a body lies waiting. The dead man is posed with a child’s Christmas list in his pocket, and the first mysterious item – 1. No angel – is crossed off.

When a second body is found – a woman, stabbed in the abdomen after her work Christmas do – Stonem is convinced there’s a grim connection between the crime scenes and the seemingly innocent list. 2. Red partee dress. Could this be a murderer’s twisted code?

As a blizzard rages in the Tyne & Wear countryside, the body count is snowballing. Can Stonem stop the killer before they get everyone on their Christmas list?

I bought ‘The Killer’s Christmas List‘ partly because it was promoted as “An anti-cosy Christmas crime novel“. Given that it’s about a serial killer, my only concern was that it might be one of those books that gets a little too fascinated with the killer’s violence. It turned out I needn’t have worried about that. My problem with the book was quite different.

It’s been ages since I’ve read a British police procedural. Entering this one, I was struck by how ritualistic they are. I felt I was treading a familiar, pre-ordained path with only the travellers and the location changing. That laid a burden on the quality of the prose and the characterisa tion that ‘The Killer’s Christmas List‘ didn’t rise to, in my opinion.

The storytelling was functional, unhurried and focused on acknowledging the emotional impact of each step of the investigation on the people involved. Even so, from the start, I struggled to become engaged with the people.

A quarter of the way through the book, I decided to put it aside. It was too ‘afternoon TV’ for me. The storytelling was realistic but plodding. The characters were believable without being interesting. The writing was functional except when it tried too hard and threw me out of the story with phrases like: “The Mill was huge and hewn from redbrick” How can something be hewn and be made of bricks? I wasn’t bored but I wasn’t engaged either. If this had been a TV show, I’d happily have made a cuppa without pressing pause because I was unlikely to miss anything vital.

I was mildly intrigued by the child’s narrative that was sprinkled between the chapters detailing the investigation and I’m sure the plot had a good twist or two to deliver but I was too restless to stick around and find out what they’d be.