{"id":1399,"date":"2022-12-02T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/?p=1399"},"modified":"2022-11-30T16:47:40","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T16:47:40","slug":"the-girl-who-killed-santa-claus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/2022\/12\/02\/the-girl-who-killed-santa-claus\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The Girl Who Killed Santa Claus&#8217; by Val McDermid #ChristmasCountdown Door no. 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>&#8216;It was the night before Christmas, and not surprisingly, Kelly Jane Davidson was wide awake. It wasn&#8217;t that she wanted to be. It wasn&#8217;t as if she believed in Santa and expected to catch him coming down the chimney onto the coal-effect gas fire in the living-room. After all, she was nearly eight now&#8230;&#8217;<\/em><\/strong><strong><em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1509\" style=\"width: 437px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/files\/2017\/12\/Flambard-Press-823.914-MCD.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1509\" class=\" wp-image-1509\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/files\/2017\/12\/Flambard-Press-823.914-MCD.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"427\" height=\"638\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1509\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Front cover of Stranded (Flambard Press, 823.914 MCD)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>So goes the opening of the short story &#8216;The Girl Who Killed Santa Claus&#8217; by renowned crime writer, Val McDermid. The story can be found in her collection <em>Stranded<\/em> which was published by Flambard Press in 2005.<\/p>\n<p>Flambard Press was a North East-based independent press which published a range of poetry and fiction, as well as some non-fiction and visual-art books. It was particularly focused on publishing new and neglected writers in the North of England, as well as promoting live literature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;It was the night before Christmas, and not surprisingly, Kelly Jane Davidson was wide awake. It wasn&#8217;t that she wanted to be. It wasn&#8217;t as if she believed in Santa and expected to catch him coming down the chimney onto &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/2022\/12\/02\/the-girl-who-killed-santa-claus\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":1295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[197,76,340,338,342,46,341,339],"class_list":["post-1399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christmas-countdown","tag-christmascountdown","tag-christmas","tag-fiction","tag-flambard-press","tag-literary-archive","tag-literature","tag-short-story","tag-val-mcdermid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1399"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3680,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1399\/revisions\/3680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}