The Game is Afoot!

The Christmas number of The Strand Magazine arrived this morning. I planned on saving it for the Christmas weekend but now I find I've already allowed myself to read - not to say devour - half of it. Must be more abstemious. It is, after all, still Advent.

From the editor:

In our holiday issue, we have a collection of yarns which will ensure that you are so preoccupied with reading The Strand that you won't notice some of the more annoying holiday television commercials. Rumpole is on the case in John Mortimer's "Rumpole and Father Christmas," Hamish Macbeth makes his first appearance in The Strand Magazine-in M.C. Beaton's "Knock, Knock, You're Dead," Alexander McCall Smith offers up a tale which shows us why father knows best in "A Sound Understanding," Ed Hoch presents us with the cozy Yuletide mystery "An Irregular Christmas," and Peter Tremayne disturbs Holmes' holiday in "The Case of the Panicking Policeman." For our Great Detectives series, Patricia Craig profiles Nicholas Blake's Nigel Strangeways and Simon Winder profiles the greatest secret agent of all time, none other than Bond, James Bond, that charming, martini-drinking, womanizing hero who is always lucky enough to run across the most egomaniacally stupid villains on the face of the earth! And as usual, this issue of The Strand also features reviews of the latest mysteries, audiobooks, and children's mysteries as we continue to expand our review section.