What would an English murder be? Why, it must be a murder of a kind entirely peculiar to England, such as are the murders related in this particularly ingenious novel. And, naturally, it takes a foreigner to savour the full Englishness of a specifically English crime. Such a foreigner is Dr. Bottwink who plays a very important part in the shocking events at Christmastide in Warbeck Hall. The setting seems, at first, to be more conventional than is usual in Mr. Hare's detective stories. The dying and impoverished peer, the family party, the snow-bound castle, the faithful butler and his ambitious daughter. But tins is all part of Mr. Hare's ingenious plan, and there is nothing at all conventional about the murders themselves and the maimer of their detection. In short, tins is a peculiarly enjoyable dish of murder

Francis Pettigrew's holiday turns to nightmare when he stumbles across a body on Boulter's Tussock – a rather alarming body at that, given to vanishing and reappearing in unexpected places