The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (Russian: Отель «У Погибшего Альпиниста») is a 1970 Soviet science fiction novel written by brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

In 2015, Melville House published an English translation by Josh Billings as part of their Neversink Library collection.

The novel heavily incorporates elements of detective fiction[1] as it follows Inspector Peter Glebsky as he attempts to solve a classic locked-room mystery.

However, the novel subverts common mystery novel tropes,[2] and flouts the second of Ronald Knox's "Ten Commandments" of the detective genre: "All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

The novel begins when Inspector Peter Glebsky, eager to get away from work and family life, takes a two-week vacation to the titular hotel.

Over a meal and conversation about the theoretical possibility of alien visitation, Glebsky learns that the guests have been victim to a number of pranks.

The day also brings more pranks, such as a mysterious note that indicates that the sickly Hinkus is actually a gangster intent on the murder of one of the inn's guests.

After ascertaining that they must be aliens from another planet, Champion blackmailed them to aid his gang in a couple of high-profile robberies, after which Beelzebub ran away.

The Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel, however, being for the most part free of political commentary, reached publication with only minor adjustments made by censors of the time.

[6] In his 1999 memoir Comments on the Past [ru] (Комментарии к пройденному) Boris Strugatsky writes that for a long time they mulled over idea to write a typical fanciful commercial mystery novel, but then decided to make a literary experiment: instead of a clever solution of the mystery, the novel would make a somersault into a completely different story.

[7] The story has been adapted into the Soviet Estonian film "Hukkunud Alpinisti" hotell, directed by Grigori Kromanov at Tallinnfilm in 1979.

[8] The novel was adapted into a point and click adventure game (ru:Отель «У погибшего альпиниста» (игра)) by the Ukrainian company Electronic Paradise.