The Blood in Snowflake Garden

In an alternative universe, Santa's North Pole City is no mere myth. But the reality has little to do with the jolly image promoted to the rest of the world. The North Pole is a grim industrial complex where worker elves and flying reindeer rarely live happy and long lives ... and where Santa Claus is a booze-sodden wreck. Detective Max Sneed is dragged out of retirement when Vlad Volsky, Premier of gun-free North Pole City, is mysteriously shot to death in Snowflake Garden. Prime suspect is Santa himself, suffering alcoholic depression after McCarthy anti-communist witch-hunts in his universe ban him from US airspace. During the six months' long polar night, Max is assisted in his investigation by visiting English journalist, Robert Watson, who struggles to resist the advances of Mrs Claus's pot-induced horniness and is bemused by the complex social interplay between humans and elves. Within this universe echo the events of our own turbulent sixties. The winding murder investigation becomes tangled with cold war politics, corporate espionage, bitter worker revolt and a powerful civil rights movement that threatens to destroy the fragile tinsel myth. Lewis brings us a North Pole struggling to retain its image in the midst of labor disputes, volatile human-elf relations, a discredited Santa, and now the murder of Santa's right-hand man. With a little grit and a lot of charm, The Blood in Snowflake Garden is a perfect mix of mystery, mayhem and magic. - Jaden Terrell, Executive Director of the Killer Nashville Crime Literature Conference and author of the Jared McKean mysteries Fans of Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' will feel at home in Lewis's 'The Blood in Snowflake Garden'. - Poet and author Sam Smith