Note: I accessed a digital review copy of this book through Edelweiss. ( )

Will read more of these ( )

Well, this was a bit of a dud. Interesting enough up to a point, and then she made an unconscionable mistake. A retired professor takes his nephew up on an offer of a peaceful winter in nephew's cottage, while nephew is wintering in Paris. But winter turns out to be colder and snowier than usual; the power goes off; nephew has forgotten to bring in a spare canister for the gas heater and Uncle has failed to bring boots; all the neighbors are neighborly, but full of gossip and speculation about a murder that happened six years ago, the last time there was such a spell of snow and power outages. Then, of course, another murder occurs...and Uncle puts it all together. The problem is, and I assure you of this, no ex-military man would ever sit around cleaning a loaded pistol, not even absent-mindedly. And we're given to understand that he was doing it knowing full well it was loaded. Nopenopenope. And that point wasn't even necessary to the plot. A very simple revision would have made everything work out just as well...well, better, actually. ( )