Monday, December 28, 2015

Do Crooks Take a Break Around the Holidays?

Clever crooks don't take a break around the holidays. They know people are distracted, not only getting ready before, but during the holidays.

On TV, I saw footage of robbers leaping over fences to access packages dropped off by the UPS. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year's Eve, Fourth of July, and other celebration times provide excellent opportunities for robbers to invade empty homes.

A while back, our church lost it's Christmas collection to crooks. Since then, that important collection has been diligently safeguarded. 

Why not consider centering a mystery around a holiday? From your own experiences, you'll have a head start in the setting department, so why let that go to waste?


In Two Wrongs, my now perma-free mystery, I described the Christmas windows at what was then Marshall Field's, and is now called Macy's. I also included descriptions of their Walnut Room, where through the years many have visited the Big Tree and partaken in such goodies as ice cream snowmen. The hero's visit there figures greatly in the plot.

Can you think of other books where a holiday is part of a plot? If so, please share.





Find all of Morgan Mandel's mysteries
and romances at her Amazon Author Page:

Easy access to excerpts at:
http://morgansbooklinks.blogspot.com 

Twitter: @MorganMandel

2 comments:

authorlindathorne said...

I can't name many specific ones this moment, but there are lots of books with stories centering around the Christmas holiday time. Some funny like Christmas Vacation. Oops, that's a movie. On the Gulf Coast, Mardi Gras is considered a holiday by many although it's not a federal holiday, and I've read book after book where the plot gets tangled up in the Mardi Gras tradition and with Fat Tuesday.

Morgan Mandel said...

It's possible that Christmas doesn't inspire as many mystery writers to write about crooks.