In this book Margaret Millar returns to the wry mixture of imaginative farce and queasy horror which first won the hearts of mystery fans. It has a firm, fast plot and a rich variety of characters that are as real as they are amusing. They are presented first through the eyes of Isobel Seton, a candid and witty New Yorker who has bought skis and is riding on Sno-bus to a Sno-lodge in the wilds of Quebec in the middle of a snowstorm. Other passengers include a burlesque artist, a refugee English poet whose genius is to madness near allied, an aging divorcee who acts as his patroness, a handsome young couple who are reveling masochistically in a frustrated honeymoon, a married pair who wish somebody had frustrated their honeymoon, a precocious sophomore who is making an avocation of protecting her mild and mannerly father against the perils of sex, and a handsome young-old man who says he’s so wicked that nobody believes him until he proves it. There’s a bus-driver, too, who stops the car in the middle of nowhere, walks away into the blizzard and doesn’t come back. The account of what happens to the stranded ski-party in that decayed wilderness chateau during the mad night that follows will provide mystery fans with the kind of evening that they are fanatical about. There is Miss Rudd, the elderly owner of the place, playfully free with the shears, the bus-driver’s coat discovered under the coal, the grizzly discovery in the snowbound front yard along toward morning, and other more hair-raising adventures as the tempo rises. This is the swiftest and most entertaining of Mrs. Millar’s contributions to hairbreadth-escape literature