“As Dark as Christmas Gets,” which features Chip Harrison and Leo Haig, was written for a pamphlet that served as Otto Penzler’s Christmas gift. Every year Otto commission’s a story from a writer of his acquaintance, with the sole requirement that the story be set in his establishment, The Mysterious Bookshop, and that it involve the crime or the threat of a crime. I wrote this one, and it was subsequently published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and collected in Enough Rope, my omnibus of short fiction. I hope you enjoy it!