Ten From Ten — Dean Street December IV

 

 It's December 2025 and Dean Street Press have once again given me something to celebrate. The wonderful Liz Dexter's  hosting a FOURTH Dean Street December, and this year my theme is symmetry.

For the inaugural Dean Street December, I managed to read and review 27 books published by Dean Street Press. For Dean Street December Deux, and Drei I opted for a much saner 15. This year I'm aiming for a nice round ten. Ten books from ten different authors for the (nominally) tenth month, shown below: 

 As in previous years, I plan to read the books in the left-to-right order of the screenshot. Mystery, murder and mayhem dominate again with seven authors, including one writing pair. Just as in 2024, the Sara Woods is a brand new release from DSP, only becoming available in December 2025. Molly Clavering and Margery Sharp return, representing team Furrowed Middlebrow.

 All my reviews will be posted at The StoryGraph again, but I will also update this page with a link to the reviews as I finish each book. Once again, my reviews will include "Did Not Finish" reviews if needed. Life really IS too short to waste time on books that don't click with me, and so if any of these books trigger my drop reflex, I will outline why I dropped them rather than force myself to finish them.

This year, the first entry for my Dean Street December is Murder Isn't Cricket  by E. and M. A. Radford. The second of four Dean Street Press reprints from the  Doctor Manson series. I quite enjoyed their first reprint, Murder Jigsaw and love the professional policeman focus.  Let's see if this one bowls me over - since I know it will likely leave me stumped.

 

 

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And that's a wrap on my Dean Street December for 2025. As an epilogue, I'd say it was overall another successful challenge.

Thanks to the wonderful stats at the Storygraph I know that my average for the 10 books was 3.88. This seems spot-on, reflecting that while there were no new favourites or 5-star reads, there were no major disappointments either.

I've always had a theme of sorts when I do Dean Street December, and this year my theme was 10 from 10 – trying 10 different authors. Generally speaking the old favourites from those 10 did not let me down. Especially Brian Flynn. Four several years, Flynn was second for me in Dean Street press detective reprints after Christopher Bush. But Flynn has been a real run for me and that run continued with The Swinging Death. Bush himself stepped up with a completely different story – TheTrail of the Three Lean Men was a lot of fun, and Sara Woods confirmed that she is an author I can rely on by being one of only two authors to score higher than 4 out of five with This Little Measure.

The final entry for this year's challenge probably summed up the whole challenge. Overall,  a very enjoyable read but with some elements that meant the pleasure was diminished. The other lesson I learned from this year's challenge is that less is more. 

Doing only 10 was great, especially as I have an incredibly busy last 10 days of the year. Putting all the lessons that I learned from this year's challenge together, if Dean Street December comes back for 2026 I will once again settle for a number around 10, and I  feel no compunction in sticking to tried and true favourites. That means Punshon, Bush, Flynn, Woods, and hopefully a biography apparently coming out around April that I am really  excited about and very much looking forward to. Whether that happens or not, thanks again to our fabulous host, Liz Dexter  for organising and managing the event and of course to  Dean Street Press for supplying the grist for all our mills.