The acclaimed author brings us crime at a country-house Christmas party in “one of her best and most baffling mysteries” (Daily Express).

“So dashed entertaining.” —Kirkus Reviews

No sooner has Inspector Roderick Alleyn settled in to his mother’s house, eager for a relaxing end to his vacation, than he gets a call that a model has been stabbed at the artists’ community down the road.

This tale of murder at a snowed-in country house is a “constant puzzle to the end...alive with wit” (The New York Times).

During World War II, a mud-baths resort in rural New Zealand is on the brink of being taken over by a local blowhard who may be a Nazi spy. Inspector Alleyn has been sent in to sort things out—and don a disguise in order to blend in the resort’s motley cast of characters—in this classic tale of detection from the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.

Sir Henry Ancred, a celebrated Shakespearean actor, has arranged to have his portrait painted by Agatha Troy, wife of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. But when Ancred is killed at his own birthday party, leaving behind a family full of suspects, Troy’s work ends and Inspector Alleyn’s begins…