In yet another "Where did this come from?", I just finished The Fat Man: A Tale of North Pole Noir by Ken Harmon, about 3 months before the season it was meant to be read in.But hey, out of season is occasionally my thing, so....
Anyway, the book is narrated by Coal Patrol leader Gumdrop Coal. His entire job at Santa's workshop is to deliver coal to all the bad boys and girls. Until Santa fires him a few months before Christmas. Which leads to the promotion of one Candy Cane taking over a bunch of Santa's activities, an intrepid girl reported named Rosebud Jubilee working with Gumdrop to find out why, particularly after a human Gumdrop beat up to teach the son some manners winds up shot dead with a BB from a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle with a compass on the stock. (Yes, references to just about Christmas story ever told on film or in prose shows up at some point in here. And entire chapter in Whoville is written in Seussian verse.)
By the end, we get a heck of a lot of Christian allegory on the meaning of Christmas, largely due to the appearance of a child with a blanket), a hell of a lot really funny scenes involving holiday entertainment references, and a pretty good mystery. We also get one particular scene in the Mistletoe Forest that doesn't really fit a Christmas trope or a hard boiled mystery. On the other hand, we do get an absolutely hysterical sequence involving all 12 days of Christmas.
After Halloween, if you find yourself wanting something fun to help you get past the sap and treacle that normally fills December, this is a great way to do so.
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