James Bennett, nephew of Sir Henry Merrivale (the cantankerous yet genius sleuth), has been invited to stay at White Priory for Christmas, among the retinue of the glamorous Hollywood actress Marcia Tait. Her producer, her lover, her playwright and her agent are all here along with the haughty master of the estate, Canifes and his daughter. So many suspects they become when Marcia Tait is found dead on Christmas morning in the lakeside pavilion, having been left there alone the night before and with a distinct lack of footprints in the snow to reveal any possible killer. When Henry Merrivale arrives to piece together what appears to be an impossible crime, John Dickson Carr, writing under the pseudonym Carter Dickson, treats the reader to sensational twists, febrile tension between the closed circle of suspects and one of the most perfect solutions in the history of the genre.