Rim of the Pit

Rim of the Pit (1944) is a locked-room mystery novel written by Hake Talbot, a pen name of Henning Nelms.

A group of people gather at a remote snowbound lodge in the wilds of northern New England.

Remarried, the medium's husband wants permission from the dead man to open a tract of land to logging.

The hero, Rogan Kincaid, is an adventurer who takes it upon himself (with help from a Czech refugee, the daughter of the dead man, and others), to solve the mystery before the police are brought in.

In a poll of 17 detective story writers and reviewers, this novel was voted as the second best locked room mystery of all time, behind John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man (1935) and before Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907-1908).