Boxing Day circa 1935. A snowed-in manor on the very edge of Dartmoor. A Christmas house-party. And overhead, in the attic, the dead body of Raymond Gentry, gossip columnist and blackmailer, shot through the heart. But the attic door is locked from the inside, its sole window is traversed by thick iron bars and, naturally, there is no sign of a murderer or a murder weapon.

Fortunately (though, for the murderer, unfortunately), one of the guests is the formidable Evadne Mount, the bestselling author of countless classic whodunits. In fact, were she not its presiding sleuth, THE ACT OF ROGER MURGATROYD is exactly the type of whodunit she herself might have written.

Gilbert Adair's novels include The Holy Innocents, Love and Death on Long Island, The Death of the Author, The Key of the Tower and A Closed Book. He is also the author of a full-length verse parody of Pope - The Rape of the Cock, and two sequels to classics of children's literature - Alice Through the Needle's Eye and Peter Pan and the Only Children. His non-fiction includes Hollywood's Vietnam, Myths and Memories, The Postmodernist Always Rings Twice, Flickers and Surfing the Zeitgeist. He was awarded the Scott-Moncrieff prize for his translation of George Perec's 'e'-less A Void. He lives in London and is regularly published as a journalist.