Who'll Be Dead for Christmas? Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A cozy, wisecracking lesbian Christmas mystery with a lovable accident-prone sleuth and a Goldie win behind it, let down by a conspiracy plot that gets tangled at the finish and a dog the book seems to forget.

Best for: Readers who want a light, funny amateur-sleuth story with an older lesbian couple at its heart, and who’ll happily trade a tight whodunit for jokes, neighbors and holiday mood.

Heat level: ★★☆☆☆ (1.5/5: my estimate, since romance.io has no entry and no reader mentions anything on the page beyond affection)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.7/5: a 4.27 Goodreads average from 148 ratings, but only a thin stack of written reviews and a much cooler 3.45 on StoryGraph)

Tropes: Amateur sleuth, established couple, fear of saying “I love you”, Christmas setting, new house with a murder in it, hidden journal, medical conspiracy, quirky neighbors, accident-prone heroine, series comfort read.

Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas? by Kate Sweeney is book four of the Kate Ryan Mysteries, a long-running lesbian mystery series from the small press Intaglio Publications, and it drops its clumsy ex-private investigator into a cheap Chicago brownstone a week before Christmas, only for her to learn the last tenant was murdered in the kitchen and that the dead scientist worked at the same hospital as her girlfriend, Dr. Maggie Winfield.

It sits at 4.27 across 148 Goodreads ratings and 4.7 across 111 on Amazon, and it won the 2010 Golden Crown Literary Society award (the Goldie) for Mystery/Thriller. That’s a strong résumé for a quiet 2009 small-press book. The catch is that almost nobody wrote much about it, and the few who did keep circling the same two things. Both are worth knowing before you start.

What Is Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas? About?

This is a cozy-leaning amateur-sleuth mystery first and a love story second. Amazon files it under Lesbian Fiction and LGBTQ+ Mystery, Goodreads readers shelve it as Mystery and Lesbian Fiction, and romance.io doesn’t list it at all. The romance is a thread running through a murder plot, and the setting is small-world: one Chicago building, one hospital, a holiday deadline.

Kate Ryan is a middle-aged, accident-prone ex-P.I. who keeps tripping into murder cases she’d rather avoid. What she’s actually scared of here is three words. She and Maggie are together, but readers describe Maggie as waiting on Kate to stop dodging and say she loves her. The story stays close to Kate throughout, so you get her wisecracks and her panic in equal measure, and that voice is most of the appeal.

What Makes This Lesbian Christmas Mystery Work

The humor: This is the most repeated praise by a distance. Seven separate reviewers call it funny or say Kate is good for a laugh, and Amazon’s own review summary lands on “entertaining” and “humor” too.
Pace: Six readers say they tore through it or couldn’t put it down, and at 224 pages that’s believable. One reader finished it in a single night.
The new neighbors: A conspiracy-minded hippie couple who run a natural food store and two men across the hall, one of whom talks like a medieval courtier and keeps comparing Kate and Maggie to Tracy and Hepburn. Readers single this cast out as a highlight.
Kate and Maggie: Five reviewers talk about the couple more than the case. The pull is Kate’s terror of commitment against Maggie’s patience, which works as a gentle slow burn inside an existing relationship.
The award: The Goldie for Mystery/Thriller in 2010 is the one outside signal this book has, and it’s a real one for a small-press lesbian title.

Book Synopsis

Kate Ryan has done the grown-up thing. With Christmas a week away, she’s bought a renovated brownstone on Chicago’s North Side, back in the neighborhood where her investigating days began and ended, and she’s paid surprisingly little for it. She wants a place good enough to bring Maggie home to. She’s also, in her own stumbling way, working up the nerve to tell Maggie how she feels.

The bargain price has a reason. The previous tenant, a research scientist, was killed in that kitchen, and he worked at University Hospital, where Maggie is a doctor. Then Kate stumbles on things he hid inside the house: a journal and a disc tucked away where nobody was supposed to look. What’s in them points to medical research that someone powerful would very much like to keep buried, and soon other scientists start turning up dead. Someone gets into the brownstone. Someone comes after Kate. And Maggie, by virtue of where she works, starts to look like a target.

Her new building comes with neighbors who are nosy, loyal and a bit odd, and a couple of them have been muttering about conspiracies for years. Kate would like to keep them out of harm’s way, which in a Kate Ryan book means they’ll all end up in it. The question driving the rest is simple enough to be the title: with the holiday closing in, who’s going to make it to Christmas morning, and will Kate say what she needs to say to Maggie before it’s too late?

My Review

The thing this book has going for it is voice. Kate Ryan is a lesbian sleuth who isn’t slick or tough, she’s a middle-aged woman who walks into furniture and into trouble with the same bad luck, and the reviews keep coming back to that. One longtime reader’s joke about Kate “bumbling” more than investigating is pretty much the series pitch. I like a mystery heroine who’s allowed to be ridiculous.

The second strength is the building. Swapping Kate into a new home gives Sweeney a fresh supporting cast, and that’s the part readers mention by name. The aging hippies who see plots everywhere turn out to have a point this time, which is a good joke and a decent clue at once. The neighbor who talks like he’s at a Renaissance fair is pure comic relief.

Where it struggles is the ending of the mystery, and I’ll be upfront that this rests on less evidence than I’d like. The most detailed review anywhere, from a reader who’d followed the whole series, says this plot is more complex than the earlier books and that by the end it isn’t clear who the real villain is. Several parties seem to be behind it, and the resolution gets caught up in government agencies and private interests working against each other. That reader still had fun, but it’s a fair warning if you read mysteries for a clean solution.

The complaint that actually repeats is smaller and funnier. Kate has a nervous dog called Chance, and three different readers, on two sites, across six years, have asked what happened to him. One review is literally just “Where’s Chance?” It’s a dropped thread, and if a missing pet is going to nag at you, you’ve been warned.

One expectation to reset. The title and the Christmas setting suggest a festive cozy, and the reviews do back up the light tone, but the plot is a medical-research conspiracy with break-ins, a drugging and attempts on Maggie’s life. StoryGraph’s mood tags list it as dark and lighthearted at the same time, which is about right. If cozy is what drew you, expect more danger than cocoa. If danger is what put you off, relax, because the jokes never stop for long.

My honest note: A charming, award-winning series entry that’s better company than it is a puzzle. If you love Kate Ryan, or want a funny lesbian sleuth for December, it’s worth your evening; if you need the mystery to land cleanly, keep your expectations modest.

Element	In Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas?
Central relationship	Kate Ryan and Dr. Maggie Winfield: an existing couple, with Kate still too scared to say “I love you”
Core tropes	Amateur sleuth, established couple, Christmas deadline, house with a past, medical conspiracy, quirky neighbors
Setting	A renovated brownstone on Chicago’s North Side and University Hospital, the week before Christmas
Heat level	1.5/5: estimate. No romance.io entry, and no reviewer mentions on-page sex
Series	Kate Ryan Mysteries book 4 of 12; the case closes, the couple carries on into book 5
Content notes	Murder, multiple deaths, home invasion, physical assault, drugging, threats against a partner. StoryGraph has no crowd warnings yet

How Spicy Is Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas?

Not very, as far as anyone can tell. romance.io has no entry for this book, which fits with how it’s catalogued everywhere else, as a mystery with a romance in it. So the 1.5/5 is my estimate, built from what readers actually wrote. They describe “a side of romance” and “a great romance thrown in”, they talk about Kate and Maggie’s feelings, and not one of the nineteen written reviews mentions a sex scene or calls it steamy. Kate and Maggie are a couple, so expect affection, but the tension readers enjoy is emotional. It’s Kate dodging the big words, not anyone getting undressed.

The thing worth flagging instead is violence. There’s murder, a home invasion and an attack on Kate, and Maggie’s in danger more than once, though readers keep describing the overall tone as funny. If you want a similar low-heat mix of crime and a sapphic thread, The Bayou Keeps the Bones sits at 2/5, and Looking for Trouble pairs a comic mystery with only occasional open-door scenes.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you like clumsy, funny sleuths over hard-boiled ones, you want a lesbian couple past their twenties at the center, you’re happy with a short holiday read you can finish in a sitting, and you’ve already met Kate Ryan in the earlier books.

You may want to skip it if: you read mysteries for a tight, fair-play solution, you want the romance to be the main event, you’re after real heat, or loose ends (and missing dogs) bother you long after you close the book.

In short: great company for a December evening, a shakier puzzle than its Goldie suggests.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

Let’s start with the quiet, because it’s the main finding. This book has no current buzz at all. I found no TikTok activity for the title or the series, no Reddit threads, no blog reviews and no trade coverage. Amazon shows no editorial reviews either. romance.io doesn’t list it, StoryGraph has only 11 ratings and no content warnings, and there’s no audiobook. The written record is 16 Amazon reviews and 3 on Goodreads, and several of those are a single line long. The ratings have built up slowly since 2009, mostly from readers working through the series. So people find this book through the series itself, plus its 2010 Goldie, as book four of something they already like.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): “Funny” is the recurring word. Seven reviewers name the humor, and the ones who say more than a line tend to quote Kate’s bad luck with fondness. Next comes speed: six readers say it’s fast, gripping or impossible to put down. Then the couple. Five reviewers talk about Kate and Maggie, and they all describe the same dynamic, Maggie loving Kate and waiting while Kate tries to find her nerve. One early reader called it the best in the series so far. And a lot of reviews praise the series more than this specific book, which is loyalty talking and worth weighing.

What readers argue about and complain about: First, the dog. Chance, Kate’s scaredy-cat dog, goes missing from the story without explanation, and three independent readers on Amazon and Goodreads ask about it, between 2016 and 2022. It’s the only complaint that recurs. Second, and from one voice only: the plot’s resolution. The longest and most thoughtful review says the case gets “a little muddled” at the end, with no single clear villain and a lot of competing agencies and private interests to keep straight. I’d treat that as a credible single report rather than a consensus. Third, the numbers themselves. Amazon’s 4.7 has almost no low stars, Goodreads at 4.27 has 15 three-star and 5 two-star ratings that came with no written explanation, and StoryGraph’s small sample comes in at 3.45. The quieter platforms are cooler on it, and nobody who rated it lower said why.

One series-level note, posted on book five rather than this one: at least one reader finds the Kate and Maggie dynamic leans on dated gender roles.

The series question everyone should ask first: This is book 4 of the Kate Ryan Mysteries, which Amazon counts at twelve books. The murder case wraps up inside this book, so there’s no cliffhanger on the crime. The relationship is ongoing, though, and Kate and Maggie carry on into book five, Of Course It’s Murder, which sits slightly higher at 4.33 across 117 Goodreads ratings. You can start here as a seasonal one-off, but one reader recommends reading the series in order to follow how the couple develops, and the existing relationship will land harder if you’ve watched it start in She Waits, which won the author the 2007 Goldie for debut.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas? a lesbian romance?

It’s a lesbian mystery with a romance thread. Kate Ryan and Dr. Maggie Winfield are a couple, and Kate’s fear of saying “I love you” runs alongside the murder plot, but the case is the main event.

How spicy is Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas?

Low. romance.io doesn’t list the book, and none of the 19 written reviews on Amazon and Goodreads mentions a sex scene, so I estimate it at 1.5/5.

Do I need to read the Kate Ryan Mysteries in order?

Not strictly. This is book 4 and the mystery is self-contained, but readers recommend going in order to follow Kate and Maggie’s relationship, which starts in She Waits.

Does Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas? end on a cliffhanger?

No. The murder case is resolved within the book, though one detailed reviewer found the ending a little muddled. Kate and Maggie’s story continues into book 5, Of Course It’s Murder.

Did Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas? win any awards?

Yes. It won the 2010 Golden Crown Literary Society award (the Goldie) in the Mystery/Thriller category.

Is there an audiobook of Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas?

Not that I could find. Amazon lists Kindle and paperback editions only, and there’s no audio edition on Audible or Libro.fm.

If You Loved Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas?, Read These Next

For another funny mystery with a sapphic thread that takes a back seat to the case, try Looking for Trouble, set during a chaotic Melbourne by-election. If it was the low-heat crime and the danger you enjoyed, The Bayou Keeps the Bones is darker and more suspenseful. And if what you want is more Christmas with a laugh in it, When the Bell Rings is a holiday rom-com built on comic chaos, though our review found it uneven. For more like these, browse our Christmas mysteries and winter thrillers list, the sapphic holiday romance favorites, or the full Book Reviews archive.

The Bottom Line

Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas? sets out to be a funny, warm holiday mystery with a lesbian couple at its center, and on the warm and funny part it delivers. Readers love Kate’s bad luck, they race through it, and the new neighbors give the book its heart. What it does less well is the puzzle: the resolution gets tangled, a dog vanishes from the story, and the written evidence for all of it is thinner than the shiny ratings suggest. If you already like Kate Ryan, or you want a light lesbian sleuth for the holidays and don’t mind a messy ending, it’s worth it. Check Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas? on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Who’ll Be Dead for Christmas? ranks as a comfort-read small-press lesbian cozy mystery. It’s funny and easy to love, held back by a muddled finish, and best read for Kate and her neighbors rather than for the whodunit.