“Hark! The Herald Angel Screamed,” by Mignon F. Ballard

FM’s ratings:

1. Premise 5
2. Prose 5
3. Plot 7
4. Characters 7
5. Overall 6

Comments (optional - but try to keep it under 3000 words!)

At first, this novel was in danger of a much lower rating. The stereotype of a "Cozy Mystery" of being way too girly-chatty and filled with uninteresting details was in full swing for much of the first quarter to a third of the book. The descriptions of Christmas decorations and Christmas wardrobe and Christmas food [yes, with recipes at the end of the book] was rather over the top and bogged things down considerably. Okay, so it IS a Christmas-themed novel and we can presume that many would read it with the expectation of such detail. But the actual plot points could have been presented in a President's Day novel or a Grandparents Day novel just as well. The cast was virtually all grandmothers with the occasional grandfather thrown in. And maybe that was the target demographic for this book. The author seemed to snap out of it to some extent as the end approached, and gave us a fairly decent clue-oriented mystery; just much too late. I will presume that some of Ballard's other works would score a 7 or even an 8 on my personal scale. But - with apologies - I will probably never find out.