From the tough but colorful pub that provides the novel’s title, to the snowboard Gothic estate nearby, the chilly English landscape has never held more atmosphere-or thwarted love. And Jury won’t have a more mysterious Christmas.

Five Days Before Xmas – On his method to a short holiday (he thinks) Jury meets a woman he could fall deeply in love with. He fits her within a snow covered graveyard-not, he feels, the best way to begin an attahcment.

Four Days Before Christmas – Jury meets Father Rourke, who pulls for him the semiotic square-”a structure that might simplify thought,” says the priest, but Jury’s thoughts want more than symbols.

Three Days Before Xmas – Melrose Herb, Jury’s aristocratic and unofficial assistant, finds Spinney Abbey, now home to a well-known critic. Among the assembled snowbound guests he fits: Lady Assington, Beatrice Sleight, and the painter Edward Parmenger. If they all assemble in the dining room, Woman Assington announces, “I think we should possess a murder.”