On a train bound for Manchester a group of mismatched travellers band together when the loco gets stuck in an impenetrable snowdrift. Led by the intrepid and perspicacious Edward Maltby, 60 years old and a proud member of the Royal Psychical Society, a motley crew escaping from a snowed-in train take refuge in an abandoned house. Age has not diminished this wintry tale, originally published in 1937, from British crime novelist Farjeon (1883–1955), whose Number 17 was the basis of the Hitchcock film of the same name. No one, it turns out, is hiding a secret or has an ulterior motive, the train murder and the manor mystery aren't really related, and the real villains of the piece remain largely off-stage.

We know it was travelling out of London, but there seems to be a possible bit of confusion about where exactly it started. When Bennett’s uncle, the cantankerous amateur sleuth Sir Henry Merrivale arrives from London to make sense of this impossible crime, the reader is treated to a feast of the author’s trademark twists, beguiling false answers and one of the most ingenious solutions in the history of the mystery genre. Nevertheless David’s comeback is a good one: ‘Because, Mr Hopkins, whenever anything has to be faced, you always go round and round the bush yourself, and so I have to go round and round the bush to catch up with you.

When a Christmas Eve blizzard brings their journey from Euston Station to an untimely halt, the passengers—David Carrington and his sister, Lydia; clerk Robert Thomson; chorine Jessie Noyes; Edward Maltby, of the Royal Psychical Society; and an old bore named Hopkins —severally leave their carriage seeking the Hemmersby train station.

This gentle satire reminded me of Gladys Mitchell's sharp send-up of the cosy tradition, her lively 1932 tale The Saltmarsh Murders . But--the tale is such great fun and is such a wild bobsled of a ride through Farjeon's winter wonderland that one can suspend one's disbelief in psychic happenings.Passengers are on their way to holiday gatherings on a train traveling from London to the countryside. By the time the storm ends, four people will have been murdered, and the survivors, not the police, will deliver justice in the satisfying ending. I chose to read this book over the holidays because it promised to be a nice vintage Christmas mystery.