[1] A whodunit with comic overtones, it takes the form of a country house mystery, a genre at its height during the decade.

His debut novel, it was a commercial success and led to him giving up his job in the timber trade to become a full-time writer.

It was reissued in 2018 by the British Library Publishing, as part of a group of crime novels from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.

Jim Henderson is one of six guests invited by Edwin Carson, an avid collector of precious gems to his gloomy country estate at Thrackley.

In 1952 it was adapted into the film Hot Ice directed by Kenneth Hume and starring John Justin, Barbara Murray and Ivor Barnard.