Do You See What I See?

Here’s a holiday-themed novella as brilliantly told as it is fully terrifying, with an energy akin to Swanson’s earlier holiday novella, The Christmas Guest (2023). Nicholas Child’s career is on the rocks; for starters, his publisher dropped him and he hasn’t succeeded in signing with anyone new. Meanwhile, super-popular novelist Marco Tavares is unable to get past a classic case of writer’s block to finish his sophomore effort. While the two authors barely know each other, they do share the same agent, who makes the unorthodox suggestion that Nicholas join Marco for the holidays at Marco’s Cape Cod mansion. This would, presumably, give Nicholas a chance to dig into Marco’s manuscript and begin to complete the missing pages and for Marco to, well, drink. Miraculously, both writers agree. More surprising are the other residents: Marco’s ex-girlfriend and her jealous husband, the silent grandmother, Marco’s oddball friend, and James Beers, who is convinced that Marco’s novel is based on one of his own. Nearly each of them believes that one of the other guests has a motive to kill Marco. And, in fact, before you know it, the corpses begin to arrive. Sophisticated and unnerving.—Brian Kenney