However thorough your search was, I’m convinced the murderer, or the burglar—call him what you will—is still in the house.

Little Levington Hall, the site of the seasonal house party in Dancing Death, is owned by Martin Braishe, inventor of a lethal gas. Unfortunately for Braishe and his houseguests, their fancy-dress ball might more accurately be described as a fancy-death ball. After the formal festivities have taken place place, nine guests remain at the snowbound Hall, along with a retinue of servants. It is at this point that dead bodies most inconveniently begin to turn up at Little Levington Hall, like so many unwanted Christmas presents. It will be up to the eccentric Ludovic Travers, with his companions John Franklin and Superintendent Wharton of Scotland Yard, to solve this most intricate and ingenious of Yuletide mysteries.

Dancing Death was originally published in 1931. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.