Sir Abercrombie “Filthy” Lewker, actor, manager, mountaineer, wartime spy and one-off (at this point) amateur sleuth is looking forward to a break in Europe when he is persuaded by his one-time spymaster to take a trip to the Matterhorn. Léon Jacot, a resistance fighter of Lewker’s acquaintance is poised to seize political power in France. It is a priority of the UK government to discover what political leanings Jacot possesses in case action needs to be taken to prevent a shift in the European political landscape.

One morning – before Lewker has managed to find the information he needs – Jacot decides to take a solo climb of one of the ascents of the Matterhorn, despite the questionable weather conditions. But when his body is spotted on one of the glaciers, it seems clear that he must have fallen, despite his expertise. But if that was the case, how exactly was the cause of death suffocation? Faced with a near impossible situation, Lewker finds himself with a multitude of motives but a distinct lack of opportunity…

So, a quick recap. Showell Styles wrote a load of books, mostly thrillers and often set on mountains – Styles was a mountaineer himself. Three (or four, sources vary) of these featured Lewker in a supporting role and after that, Styles wrote fifteen traditional murder mysteries with Lewker as the lead under the pseudonym Glyn Carr. I’ve no idea why he adopted a pseudonym given he’d already been writing about Lewker and he’d written a fair few different novels under his own name, but it makes it easier to identify these books.

This is the second Lewker mystery and there’s a little difference between this and Death On Milestone Buttress, notably he’s reining in his Shakespearean quotes because, according to the character, someone told him too. Styles’ editor, perhaps? If this worries you a bit, as it did me, there’s no real sign of a change of personality in the sleuth, and despite his resolution, there are still a fair few quotes therein, and it’s not as if the rest of his dialogue is dull. In fact, it’s fair to say that Lewker is rapidly becoming one of my favourite Golden Age sleuths – if he was from the Golden Age, that is.

The Lewker books are straight out of the Golden Age, with a clear set of suspects, clues, deductions… you know the sort of thing. One person asked me if the fact that they all seem to be set on mountains (about half of them in Snowdonia) meant that the books were repetitive. Well, this is the fifth Lewker mystery I’ve read so far, and the only non-mountain thing they have in common is that most of them is that there is often one character who acts suspiciously for no real reason other than to be a suspect for the official detective to latch on to before Lewker reveals the truth.

The mechanics of the mysteries change from book to book, using a different gambit each time. This one is a clever one… I think. The reason for “I think” is that I worked it out – I’d love to know if anyone else who’s read this worked it out too. Really not sure if the clues are a little too unsubtle or that I was on form when I read this. I think it’s all pretty clever, just possibly a little over-clued. One important bit was mentioned a little too often, but even then…

Anyway, another tick in the “Reprint Glyn Carr” column – the Rue Morgue reprints from 2007 were the last time these appeared and are still available from a lot of second hand locations, but there are only five of those (including this one). So anyone out there who wants a new candidate for reprinting will have their work cut out finding the texts, but it would be well worth their time tracking them down. Alas, only one more to go for me until I become significantly richer…