Mr. Jarrow, the central character in Mr. Mittelholzer's new novel, lives on the outskirts of a village in England not far from the Broadmoor lunatic asylum. He lives with his wife and his daughter Grace. But Mr. Jarrow maintains that his wife is dead. Only at the weekly séances which he insists on staging and at which Mrs. Jarrow "materializes" will he consent to speak to her. For the rest of the week he ignores her. For Mr. Jarrow, ever since his bad motor smash 17 years before, has been harmlessly but undoubtedly mad. To reveal the surprising things that happened to Mr. Jarrow during the few winter weeks covered by this story and the even more surprising things that Mr. Jarrow did, would be to spoil the reader's enjoyment of the plot in which excitement and laughter, horror and pathos are skilfully balanced. Mr. Jarrow dominates the scene, but the author is equally adept with Grace, whose hatred of change in any form condemns her to a lifetime's spinsterhood, with the neighbor, the ex-policeman with a passion for growing orchids, with his servant, young Hyacinth, who is rightly convinced that her shapely rump will be her fortune, and with the boisterous North and the moralizing Southerby - the two private detectives who are called in when murder strikes down five innocent victims. Foul winter weather sets the scene and brings the title to the book. Rain and gales sweep through the early chapters. Fog shrouds the middle section and hidden by it murder is done. The soft patter of snow accents the climax. Such is the stuff of which imaginative fiction is woven.