J. Jefferson Farjeon (1883–1955)

In this 1937 original murder mystery story, we meet a group of people in a train carriage who are strangers to one another and are all heading to Christmas celebrations in various places. A huge snow storm hits and stops the train's progress. The group decides to walk five miles through the storm to another train station but become confused and lost and just chance on a large house where the door is unlocked, the fires set and the tea service prepared and on the table.

Strange events and even stranger characters frighten the members of the group and some mysterious deaths lead to the group facing the mystery of the house and its past owners.

A fun read.… (more)

Fine enough writing and reasonably entertaining but there's no reason to pick this up over a thousand similar books. Almost feels like like 2 books have been jammed into one - for the "main" mystery of the house almost all the players and the background only get revealed pretty much immediately before the explanation so there's no suspense and you only get a chance to guess at a couple of details before you're just told what happened - there's little emotional investment too obviously. The first 3/5 of the book revolves around the characters from the train leaving it and finding the house and how MYSTERIOUS it is while not much happens and then for the last 2/5 it shifts to the actual mystery of the house while 2/6 of the characters from the train basically disappear and the two sections have very little to do with each other (the solution to a not very mysterious mystery a murder of someone on the train, that was in fact done by the person everyone immediately pegged as the murderer in the first 3/5 plays a minor role in wrapping up the last 2/5). The atmosphere of the book is kind of cool and there's some minor horror genre borrowing (that doesn't actually play a role in the mystery or anything, it's just an emotional/creepy thing) but it does feel kind of like a lot of padding, especially having a couple of characters who aren't very deep but you learn a lot of detail about that just don't play a role in the story at all.

The story of the house mystery is reasonable enough, but as it's pretty much all revealed by confession and the sort of "detective" character making accurate deductions immediately after most of the story is revealed it feels not much like a mystery story, more like a retelling of the facts of a story we've missed out on.… (more)

Received as a Christmas present in 2014. Published by the British Library (@BL_Publishing) this is one of a set of Golden age Crime novels that have disappeared off people's radars but republished by the British Library

A few years before WWII, a train full of people are making their way to various places one Christmas Eve, to celebrate Christmas day with various friends and relations. Their plans are delayed somewhat when an extraordinarily heavy snow brings the train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby.

see rest of my review here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/book-review-mystery-in-whiteby-j-jeffers...… (more)

Received as a Christmas present in 2014. Published by the British Library (@BL_Publishing) this is one of a set of Golden age Crime novels that have disappeared off people's radars but republished by the British Library

A few years before WWII, a train full of people are making their way to various places one Christmas Eve, to celebrate Christmas day with various friends and relations. Their plans are delayed somewhat when an extraordinarily heavy snow brings the train to a halt near the village of Hemmersby.

see rest of my review here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/book-review-mystery-in-whiteby-j-jeffers...… (more)