St. Nick
Alan Russell
Thomas & Mercer
Paper $14.99
ebook $3.99

I was looking for a noir novel with a Christmas theme.  Something similar to the book I reviewed last year.  While browsing some of Amazon’s Christmas offerings, I came across St. Nick by Alan Russell.  It wasn’t quite what I was looking for, but I’ll get to that.

The book opens on Thanksgiving afternoon.  Disgraced San Diego cop Nick Pappas has gotten up and is trying to decide what to eat, the bowl of cereal he’s just poured…or his service revolver.

So far, so good.  This is a good opening, and I’m wondering what is going to keep Pappas from offing himself.  The phone rings, and it’s his first partner, who is retired from the force and is in charge of security at a large mall.  There have been some violent muggings at the mall.  Can Nick go undergover?

He reluctantly agrees.  When he shows up the next morning, he discovers that undercover means pose as Santa.  Eventually his former partner and the head elf, an exuberantly cheery woman I wanted to kill after the first two pages in which she appeared, convince him to take the job for two days.

The first couple of chapters in which Nick tries to be Santa are played for laughs, which I was fine with.  They were genuinely funny.  But then the novel takes a turn to heartwarming and at times tear-jerking.  I don’t do heartwarming, especiallly heartwarming Christmas stories.  (I absolutely loathe It’s a Wonderful Life. I’m more of A Christmas Story kinda guy.)

I’ll talk about the negative aspect of this turn of story, since negative was my first reaction, before moving on to the positive.

Obviously Nick goes the distance and doesn’t quit.  In addition to catching the muggers (you know he will; it’s a Christmas story), he tries to provide a Christmas for a poverty stricken girl and bring some Christmas cheer to a boy dying of cancer, while finding a new love and a new outlook on life along the way.  It’s the sort of thing you see on the Hallmark Channel.  (I don’t watch the Hallmark Channel. The only time I’ve seen it is when I’m visiting my parents, and my mother is watching it.)

Based on the last few paragraphs, you might think that I didn’t care for this book.  Actually, I ended up liking it.  Once I got past my disappointment that this wasn’t a noir tale at all, Russell made me care about Nick as a character.  I even cared about the head elf.  That’s a sign of good writing.

By the time I got to the end, I had found the story rather refreshing.  Aside from a few slight fantasy elements (Christmas story, remember?), it was nice to read a book without profanity, sex, or violence (other than Nick taking out the muggers and the events that lead up to him not being a cop anymore).  Everything I’ve read for the last six months or so has been so grim that this was a nice change.  Christmas is at its heart a religious holiday, and that aspect was included in the story.  It was nice to see people of faith presented as something other than raging bigots or clueless idiots.

Oh, and all 36 chapters had Christmas carols as titles, most of them actual carols and not Frosty/Santa/Rudolph/Jingle Bells stuff.  Not only was I impressed, I didn’t realize there were that many.

So, while I don’t know that I would have bought and read this book if I had known what type of story it turned out to be, I’m glad I did.  (Does that count as a Christmas miracle?)  I read the synopses of several other of Alan Russell’s books on his website.  A couple seem to have fantasy overtones at the very least.  I’ll be reading more of his work.

I wonder if anyone at the Hallmark Channel has read this book?