The mystery of Hunting's end

The Sand Hills of Nebraska, where Mignon G. Eberhart lived as a newlywed, inspired the setting of this 1930 chiller. Smack in the middle of the rolling desolation is Hunting's End, a weekend lodge owned by the rich Kingery family. To that place socialite Matil Kingery invites a strange collection of guests -- the same people who were at the lodge when her father died of "heart failure" exactly five years ago. She intends to find out which one of them murdered him. Posing as another guest is the dapper young detective Lance O'Leary. At his recommendation Matil has engaged Nurse Sarah Keate to care for Aunt Lucy Kingery at Hunting's End -- not a pleasant assignment, as it turns out. Gathered at the lodge, Matil's guests are shut off from the outside by a November snowstorm. A collie named Jericho mopes around, and a stray cat seems to herald new, clearly unnatural deaths. What a trap to spring on people used to good wine and fresh-cut flowers at dinner! Nurse Keate is the same sharp-eyed, stiletto-tongued, strong-stomached Nightingale and sleuth who was introduced in The Patient in Room 18 and While the Patient Slept. She helped establish Mignon G. Eberhart as a mainstay of the golden age of detective fiction.