The Christmas Stocking Murders, by Denzil Meyrick review: 'improbable comedy'

Last year came Murder at Holly House, just in time for Christmas, and now we have The Christmas Stocking Murders. Both books are related as late life memoirs by Inspector Frank Grasby of the Yorkshire Police. The latest book has a ridiculous plot, in which all the blood is ketchup, and, set in December 1953, it strikes the same note as the great Ealing Comedies of that period, Kind Heart and Coronets and The Ladykillers.

Early on, Frank is unwillingly wrenched from his “favourite Wodehouse”, and there is certainly an influence there. Indeed, Inspector Frank Grasby might even be a distant cousin of Bertie Wooster. He has admittedly no Jeeves to rescue him from whatever mess he finds himself in - perhaps he is just that little, very little, bit smarter, but he certainly has Bertie's ability to land himself in the soup.

He is not, like Bertie, afflicted by aunt, but he makes up for this by being oppressed by his father, a retired Church of England parson of the Hellfire persuasion who takes as dim a view of his abilities as Aunt Agatha did of Bertie's, and by his superintendent, Arthur Jaggers, the sort of Yorkshireman who calls the designation of the Ridings as "God's Own County" into question.

Happily for Grasby, memories of his late-lamented Scottish mother come frequently to his rescue, or at least let him meet adversity and insults with a fairly stiff upper lip. He is indeed an engaging character, even though you may agree with Jaggers in wondering how he got through the War.

The plot is both complicated and absurd. Jaggers and a reluctant Grasby set off in a snowstorm for a fishing village where there have been strange goings-on, including the murder (presumed) of a fisherman, strangled by a nylon stocking.

For Grasby the only consolation is that he will be spared a Christmas dinner with his father - only a brief release, as it happens, as the old boy turns up at their hotel with a weird girlfriend in tow. There are ventures into the inhospitable North Sea in a not very inviting fishing boat, and other deaths follow, all featuring stockings. It's clear even to Grasby that there is something dodgy about these stockings, packets of which keep turning up on the beach and elsewhere.

If all this seems improbable, the reader should remember that this is 1953, the days of rationing, only two years after what Evelyn Waugh called "the Attlee Terror". So it's no great surprise that the Royal Navy is on the watch, no great surprise either to find American gangsters involved. (Grasby is fond of movies featuring chaps like Edward G Robinson and James Cagney so he twigs what's going on.)

In a note at the end, Grasby reflects "the whole thing left me uneasy... it showed up what human nature is, and then some". Quite so, but while we have storytellers like Inspector Frank Grasby to cheer us up, there is no need to despair. Not many new novels have me laughing aloud these days, but this one did, time and again. If Frank maintains this form, a Grasby for Christmas will become as welcome as a Christie for Christmas used to be. Frank wrote his memoirs in 1976, so he should have a fair number of cases left to recount.

The Christmas Stocking Murders, by Denzil Meyrick, Bantam, £16.99