Wed 19 Sep 2018
Archived Mystery Review: MARGARET MILLAR – Fire Will Freeze.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
MARGARET MILLAR – Fire Will Freeze. Random House, hardcover, 1944. Dell #157, paperback, mapback edition, no date stated [1947]. Signet P3101, paperback, 1967. IPL, paperback, 1987.
A busload of tourists is on its way to a Canadian ski lodge when suddenly the driver stops, gets out and disappears. The snow is coming down hard, and eventually the passengers decide they must seek shelter, which they do, at an isolated mansion not far away.
Living in the house are a crazy woman and her nurse, and overnight even stranger things begin to occur, in spite of which the self-absorbed passengers have a rip-roaring time. As a black comedy, this novel is first-rate. As a mystery, perhaps a bit less.
[ADDED LATER.] To be totally fair, there aren’t many writers who could could come up with a satisfactory explanation for everything that happens in the first half of this book.
As for my comments about “black comedy,” let me quote the following line from page 103 of the Dell edition. The body of the nurse has been discovered frozen solid in a snowbank below a second floor balcony, and they are trying to bring her into the house: “When they reached the front door they had to prop her up so she would go through.”
September 19th, 2018 at 5:19 pm
I have two copies of this one, but have never read it. Reading that one sentence you quoted from the book has instantly sent it into my TBR pile for October. Love it!
September 19th, 2018 at 7:46 pm
I recommend the first half of this book highly, John. I’m not so sure about the second half. The reason I can say this is because I remember the first half vividly, and when did I read this? Almost 30 years ago. The second half I don’t remember at all.
September 19th, 2018 at 6:05 pm
Not my favorite Millar and more suspense and black humor than mystery, but that is a fine title. Right now all I can think of is a SOUTH PARK episode with the same basic plot — Spoiler Warning! Kenny dies.
September 19th, 2018 at 7:51 pm
I don’t know who Kenny is, and no, you needn’t bother to tell me.
But there are a lot of horror stories I remember listening to on the radio — INNER SANCTUM, SUSPENSE and so on — that start out in similar fashion: passengers on a stranded bus and strange things start to happen, mostly involving an escaped murderer in the area, or even worse, an escaped lunatic from a nearly asylum.
September 19th, 2018 at 9:31 pm
Steve,
Just to update your street creds Kenny dies in every episode of SOUTH PARK.
And yes, this is a familiar trope in all sorts of stories.
Millar’s best works to my taste are those where the mystery element was equal to the suspense, though she was one of the masters of the form.