This is a top-notch story that should appeal to most cozy mystery fans.

Anabel Adams is desperate. She is deep in debt and in danger of losing her beloved hotel, Beechlands. But help could be on the horizon in the form of two rival investors who are coming to spend the weekend and inspect the hotel. Eager to make a good—yet inaccurate—impression, Anabel organizes a party in honor of war hero & notorious womanizer, Lawty Lawrence. She invites elite members of the smart set that are sure to delight Lawty and to impress her potential investors.

Unfortunately, an ill-timed blizzard derails Anabel’s well-laid plans, and all of her carefully selected guests cancel at the last minute. Now Anabel must make do with her meager paying hotel guests and her dull neighbors to make the party a success. But how successful can a party for Lawty be when one of the guests is a woman he cruelly cast aside and another is a man whose wife Lawty ran off with a couple of years ago?

Before the party can even get underway, Lawty is found dead in the snow underneath his bedroom window. At first, it seems to be suicide; but, when stranded motorist Inspector Lane Parry of Scotland Yard appears on the scene, he recognizes an obvious case of murder when he sees it. With the hotel snowed in and the phone lines cut, it’s up to the reluctant Inspector Parry to hunt down clues and interrogate the nutty array of suspects to find the murderer.

An isolated English country manor house is just about the ideal backdrop for any cozy mystery story, and Murder at Beechlands does not disappoint. The inhabitants of Beechlands are an unpleasant, but kooky, bunch of characters; almost any one of them has the potential to be the killer. The action is virtually non-stop, and there are a lot of red herrings lurking in the plot. Is Beechlands really cursed and haunted? Why do three mysterious knocks always seem to portend disaster at Beechlands? Just what did Miss Killigrew see in Lawty’s bedroom? And why is Cintra’s mouth always open? Or does it all boil down to the fact that a notorious criminal is lurking amongst the hotel staff?

This amusing, high-speed romp will really keep readers guessing until the end. ( )

I lost interest 2/3 of the way into the book. Several of the characters as they were described were annoying. The writing began strong and interesting as the characters began to develop, however, the characters became predictive.

The setting was an old manor in a winter storm which I truly enjoy but gave up on page 120 or 190. ( )

First Line: Up in her private suite on the first floor, Mrs. Anabel Adams paced the deep red pile carpet of her sitting room, backward and forward and round and round.

Inspector Lane Parry of Scotland Yard is stranded in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard, his car having gone into a ditch in the Sussex countryside. Staggering through the snow, he manages to find refuge at Beechlands, a place that he assumes to be a mental institution from the behavior of the people out playing in the snow. However, it's merely a country house hotel redone in florid Rococo style by its owner, Mrs. Anabel Adams. Mrs. Adams has assembled a party of guests in honor of war hero Lawton Lawrence, but when "Lawty's" body is found in the snow, Parry finds himself on a busman's holiday. Everyone seems to have a reason to want the hero dead. Can Parry himself stay alive long enough to find the killer in the snowbound hotel?

This is the second of Sarsfield's three books that I've read, the first being Murder at Shots Hall. Sarsfield is as much of a mystery as her books, since she only wrote three, and no one knows what became of her. From the talent she showed us in these two Lane Parry mysteries, it's a shame we don't have more.

The setting of snowbound Beechlands is perfect. Although renovated in what Mrs. Adams believes to be a very tasteful (and very red) Rococo style, it is an old house with rambling hallways, doors leading everywhere, and secret passageways. The weather means that no one's able to leave, and Inspector Parry can't get anyone to come take over the investigation.

Sarsfield's main strength is in her characterizations. The cast here is particularly brilliant: the grande dame owner, the pickled war hero, a movie actress, potential investors, a couple of locals, a devoted servant, and others-- all of whom are hiding something, all of whom have possible motives for wanting Lawty dead. With the booze flowing freely, most of the cast resembles a flea circus on crack; none of them are capable of staying put, and they're constantly scuttling in and out of dark rooms on all the various floors of the hotel.

I was enjoying the setting and the antics of the characters so much that I didn't make an effort to keep a scorecard as to who may have done it. If I begin reading more vintage mysteries, it will be due to writers like Maureen Sarsfield. In my best Lawty Lawrence imitation, I raise a glass to her memory. ( )