Sleuthing in the Snow

There's a blizzard and it's freezing out there. I hear the woosh of a bitter icy wind. I'm snowed-in and snowbound possibly for days. This weather makes me want to spend a quiet, cozy evening curled up next to my fireplace with a mug of hot cocoa and classic mystery books that conjure up dark, snowy, shadowy events.

GPL has several mystery books that feature snowed-in/snowbound settings, where snowfalls play a prominent part in the story. One of the best is Death Wore White by Jim Kelly. This book begins with unexplained deaths in a snowstorm. The snows of January complicate the investigations of three mysterious deaths in a police procedural set on the northern Norfolk coast of England. All of the action happens in the dead of winter, so you'll feel cold and windblown throughout the book. It is a modern version of the classic locked room mystery. A locked room mystery is a sub-genre of detective fiction in which a crime - almost always murder - is committed under apparently impossible circumstances. The crime typically involves a crime scene that no intruder could have entered or left, e.g. a locked room.

Snow also plays a role in An English Murder by Cyril Hare, a classic mystery set at Christmas.  Warbeck Hall is an old-fashioned English country house and the scene of equally English murders. All the classic ingredients are there: Christmas decorations, tea and cake, a faithful butler, a foreigner, snow falling and an interesting cast of characters thrown together.

Then there is Christmas Is Murder by C. S. Challinor where inhabitants of a hotel are snowed in and of course, murders happen. Not even a blizzard can keep Rex Graves away from Swanmere Manor, a secluded Victorian hotel in the English countryside. But instead of Christmas cheer, the Scottish barrister finds a dead guest. Was it a stroke or a dessert laced with poison? When more guests die, all hopes for a jolly holiday are dashed. Snowbound and terrified, no one can escape the cold-blooded killer. Rex Graves attempts to unravel the mystery.

Continuing on in such atmospheric conditions is the classic Three Blind Mice by Agatha Christie, where patrons and residents of a newly opened guesthouse find themselves trapped by a snowstorm and threatened by a psychotic killer. With a finite cast of characters in this "locked room" mystery, it is not long before suspicions are voiced and when pressure grows, even newlyweds start to suspect the other of being a killer.

So when the weather is terrible and blizzard conditions prevail, hopefully these recommendations will pique your desire to go sleuthing in the snow!