The Austrian Alpine ski resort of Greutz is the scene of rivalry between an English party and some new arrivals. The tension mounts with the weather closing in, when blizzards envelope the resort and avalanches threaten. Dr. Patrick Grant's particular powers of logic and reasoning are needed, however, when a member of the party is discovered murdered. Why should a seemingly insignificant individual become a victim?
Amelia Brinton, a retired headmistress of a top girl's school, appears to have accidently fallen to her death in Greece. Her friend, a Miss Forest, also meets her death having been pushed down stairs in the British Museum. Dr. Patrick Grant connects the two events and his investigations lead him to a quiet backwater village in Hampshire. Yet more mysteries unfold; a dog drowns in shallow water, there is a case of food poisoning, and finally a house appears to be haunted. There is then another murder. What connects these events and why was Amelia Brinton killed. It takes Grant's full powers of logic and deduction, with a little help from the police, to get to the bottom of what is a spine tingling mystery and ultimate crime story.
Dr. Patrick Grant does not believe that Felix Lomax died accidentally. The unfortunate Lomax was thought to be lecturing on a luxury cruise liner, but is found washed ashore on a lonely beach in Crete. Grant's investigations take him upon a trail which eventually leads to the tombs of Mycenae, where he ends up risking his own life in an effort to determine the truth.
Sam Irwin, actor, is found dead in the River Thames. It appears to be suicide. But why should he have taken his own life shortly before opening in a new play at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon? In arriving at a conclusion, Dr. Patrick Grant, a friend of Irwin, manages to link the seemingly unconnected occurrences of the death of a dog, a further suicide, and a series of art robberies. That, however, is only the prelude to a massive deception. Grant himself is threatened, and unless he can escape unscathed from a concert at the Festival Hall, the secret of Irwin's death will die with him.