I see three challenges for any Christmas book:

1. Find an original angle that's grounded in something real but allows reality to bend for Christmas
2. Evoke the spirit of Christmas without being too saccharine
3. Make me care about the people as people rather than as avatars for Christmas messages

Allen Russell's "St. Nick" manages to pass all three tests. He managed to make me laugh at bad Christmas jokes that I hadn't heard in a long time and cry at the unfairness of a universe in which children get cancer.

"St. Nick", tells the story of Nick Pappas, a San Deigo cop who has been through a recent trauma that has him suspended from the police force. It's Thanksgiving and he's living alone in a shoddy apartment and seriously contemplating eating his gun. He gives himself a reprieve to help his former partner catch some muggers at the shopping mall he runs security for. To catch the muggers, he goes undercover as Santa.

From there, Nick's life gets taken over by the responsibilities that come with the new uniform he's wearing. It brings him into contact with a terminally sick boy with an impossible Christmas wish and sends him searching for Laura, a little girl whose letter to Santa is so moving that Nick ends up starting a search to find her and help her. Along the way, he builds relationships with a relentlessly cheerful Head Elf, a nurse in the Pediatric Oncology ward and a woman TV reporter who films a segment from his lap and the quarterback from the San Diego Football team.

Throughout, Nick remains the cop he always was. He never loses touch with reality but he does allow himself to re-engage with hope and drives himself to do the right thing for children who need him.

This is an engaging read, with a great pace, a good mix of laughter and tears, a plot that surprises but remains believable and a spirit of Christmas that is about finding the hope and the love to push through the depression and the pain that life offers us. I think it's a perfect December read. ( )

Don't let the bullet holes in the bullseye target cover fool you. This is not a Bad Santa or even a Bad Cop Santa book but rather a seasonal cozy with a redemptive story line. Probably its closest parallel is "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens with grouchy suspended policeman Nick Pappas getting the Christmas spirit through his encounters while playing mall Santa while actually on stakeout for a gang of muggers targeting shoppers. Nothing deep here but a fun seasonal read (or listen). ( )

Hadn't read a book by Russell for quite some time. I loved St. Nick. The depressed cop and leave until his case is settled and he's sure he'll be fired is often thinks about suicide. When his old partner urge him to take a job undercover as Santa at a Mall, he reluctantly agrees to do it for two days. But something happens when he puts on that Santa suit. It will be one of my regular Yuletide reads from now on. ( )

Nick Pappas has a big dilemma in his life, to eat the sugar or to eat the pistol.
But when an old partner from his previous years in the police asks for his help, he will have to postpone his dilemma and become Saint Nick.
Nick will not just will have to discover the burglars of the shopping mall he is working in, he will have to make true some Christmas wishes... and all in just 24 days!
I can only say good things about this book, Alan Russell has written a cop book with dark humour, a big soul and a white Santa.
I know Christmas has just passed, but you will love this book whatever season of the year you read it, it has all the ingredients you search in a book, and all wrapped in a cop book, so what else more do you need?
Ready to open your delayed Christmas present? ( )