Death and the Dancing
Footman (1942)
Blurb:
My review:
Seven guests are chosen by their fiend-like host by reason of their mutual enmity and are imprisoned in a snowbound country house to see what results from their tension and mounting hysteria: which is, of course, murder. One is conscious throughout of the author straining for effect, and, until the murder, this is one of Marsh’s most tedious and uninspired jobs since the early ones. The matter is not helped by a particularly irritating hero, a snobbish and precious aesthete, nor by Alleyn’s late appearance, after which he does little except talk to witnesses. After the murder, if one can accept the large doses of hysteria, both masculine and feminine, the book becomes quite solid, and there is a novel twist on the alibi by wireless gimmick.