The Senior Year Hiking Club of the exclusive Altdorf residential high school in Switzerland is on a mountain trek when a blizzard blows up. The teacher in charge makes the calculated decision –the right one, as it turns out – to return to the hotel at the cable car station rather than proceeding to their planned base camp. When they get back to the hotel, all the other tourists on the mountain have departed, and the weather makes it impossible to send another car down. But the night caretaker, a young American named Matty Burkhalter, opens the hotel for them so they can wait the storm out.

But that night, one of the students, a young woman, is stabbed to death. It’s The First Death of Winter. Matty Burkhalter finds himself responsible for preserving the evidence and (on the telephoned instructions of the police) interviewing the surviving students, now all suspects. Everybody has secrets, but Matty has a secret of his own – he’s wanted for murder in the US, and the less attention he gets from the police, the happier he’ll be.

Kevin Wignall is a reliable writer. Thrillers are his usual genre, but this one is more of a mystery, with echoes of Agatha Christie. He’s not the fanciest prose stylist out there, but his work is professional. The First Death of Winter was a low-key, satisfying mystery story. There’s a Christian character featured, who’s a little weird but sympathetic overall.

Recommended.