Although it purports to be Christmas short stories not all of them are and the link can be somewhat tenuous.
Some enjoyable stories though which are easy to read including one with Sherlock Holmes ( )

Master story-teller Val McDermid here presents a dozen short stories all loosely connected to the Christmas holiday season. The first one features her well-known crime-fighting duo, Dr. Tony Hill and DCI Carol Jordan, but after that moves onto more unfamiliar territory. Without giving away too much, we meet a semi-retired Sherlock Holmes, George Orwell writing 1984 at the end of his life, and a ghost writer who is, well, a ghost. A personal favourite: for anyone familiar with The Band’s 1968 album Music from Big Pink, McDermid has taken one of the best songs and turned it into a wonderful story with a very personal twist. ( )

If you like a little despair, revenge, justice, and humor along with your Christmas cakes and cookies, pick up a copy of Val McDermid's short story anthology Christmas Is Murder.

McDermid covers a lot of ground in a series of twelve stories. From St. Petersburg to Sarajevo to the highlands of Scotland and beyond, readers meet a variety of people.

From Sherlock Holmes in "Holmes for Christmas" when he and Watson search for the true king of Scotland to a Carol Jordan and Tony Hill story in "Happy Holidays," readers find themselves in many different situations and feeling many differing emotions.

There's not a weak story in the bunch. Among my favorites is the humorous "The Girl Who Killed Santa Claus" when an eight-year-old girl thinks a burglar is stealing her Christmas presents.

There are interesting tidbits to be learned in these stories, too. (I'll have to remember the item about birch trees.) If you're a crime fiction fan who's in the mood to be enlightened and entertained, Christmas Is Murder is a fine way to spend a few hours by a holiday fire. ( )

Rather insubstantial, though entertaining.
I'm not a huge fan of short stories, but even allowing for that inherent prejudice I think that the stories in this collection were rather flimsy. Certainly not up to McDermid's normal high standards. ( )