Mont Blanc, the most prominent mountain in the Alps, the second-most in Europe and the eleventh in the world. Who on earth would want to climb it? Well, Grieg Osborne, an actor, and his fiancée (and her protective uncle) who are going to star in the upcoming film “White Mountain” about the first ascent; Jim Osborne (no relation), a journalist covering the film; Marius Menier, the local Prefect of police; two retired schoolteachers; and the renowned actor-manager Sir Abercrombie Lewker and his wife, because, well, it’s his book.

As the mismatched group make the ascent together, tensions seem to be on the rise as it becomes apparent that some of the disparate groups have history together. And then, eventually, someone falls into a crevasse, only for their body to reappear with a hole in the top of its head caused by, you guessed it, an ice-axe. But it’ll take a second such murder before Lewker can ensure the murderer faces justice…

Apparently Glyn Carr aka Showell Styles stopped writing the Lewker mysteries after fifteen titles because he had run out of ideas on how to kill someone up a mountain. This is book eight, and it does show the problems. You see, if you’re in a country house, you could be allegedly in a different room and sneak out to do a murder. On a mountain, you can be on a nearby glacier and not sneak over to do said murder because you’re miles away. So misdirecting the reader with regards to having or not having the opportunity to commit a crime is a lot more difficult.

Here, you have a significant number of the suspects who are together and a distance away from an important event. Admittedly, there is some confusion over what they see, but the truth is not the stunning revelation that Carr seems to think it is. It’s possible the reader might dismiss it as too obvious – he does provide a good clue for a red herring – but all in all, this is far too obvious to my eyes.

It think Carr is aware of this shortcoming as, just like in The Corpse At Camp Two, the murder happens quite late in the text (not as late as that one, admittedly). It basically has about 60% of build-up, a death and then Lewker doing a prolonged inquest (interrupted by a second death). And there is something very odd about the villain’s plan. What was the point of the misdirection when you’re not going to get rid of… the thing?

But this is still a very enjoyable book. The lead characters are fun, there’s a Golden Age potential romance, there’s a whiff of xenophobia when a French woman is described as “sitting in her cloud of garlic” and some lovely bits on the mountains, where Carr’s passion shines through. He does struggle a little with getting the geography across to the reader, even with a map, as the three-dimensional crime scene took me a little while to get a handle on.

All in all, an entertaining read, if not the best in the series.