Fire Will Freeze

by Margaret Millar

A bus filled with ski enthusiasts headed for a rustic chalet in Canada breaks down in the middle a blizzard, sending a mismatched group of strangers out into the night to find shelter from the storm. Shelter is found by way of a dilapidated country mansion replete with a crazy old woman and her caregiver, who “accidentally” shoots at the skiers as they approach. Unlike the would-be skiers, the inhospitable situation only goes downhill from there.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Horror, Crime, Mystery Thriller, Literature, Novels

225 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Margaret Ellis Millar (née Sturm) was an American-Canadian mystery and suspense writer. Born in Kitchener, Ontario, she was educated there and in Toronto. She moved to the United States after marrying Kenneth Millar (better known under the pen name Ross Macdonald). They resided for decades in the city of Santa Barbara, which was often utilized as a locale in her later novels under the pseudonyms of San Felice or Santa Felicia.

Millar's books are distinguished by sophistication of characterization. Often we are shown the rather complex interior lives of the people in her books, with issues of class, insecurity, failed ambitions, loneliness or existential isolation or paranoia often being explored with an almost literary quality that transcends the mystery genre. Unusual people, mild societal misfits or people who don't quite fit into their surroundings are given much interior detail. In some of the books we are given chilling and fascinating insight into what it feels like to be losing touch with reality and evolving into madness. In general, she is a writer of both expressive description and yet admirable economy, often ambitious in the sociological underpinnings of the stories and the quality of the writing.

Millar often delivers effective and ingenious "surprise endings," but the details that would allow the solution of the surprise have usually been subtly included, in the best genre tradition. One of the distinctions of her books, however, is that they would be interesting, even if you knew how they were going to end, because they are every bit as much about subtleties of human interaction and rich psychological detail of individual characters as they are about the plot.

Millar was a pioneer in writing intelligently about the psychology of women. Even as early as the '40s and '50s, her books have a very mature and matter-of-fact view of class distinctions, sexual freedom and frustration, and the ambivalence of moral codes depending on a character's economic circumstances. Her earliest novels seem unusually frank. Read against the backdrop of Production Code-era movies of the time, they remind us that life as lived in the '40s and '50s was not as black-and-white morally as Hollywood would have us believe.

While she was not known for any one recurring detective (unlike her husband, whose constant gumshoe was Lew Archer), she occasionally used a detective character for more than one novel. Among her occasional ongoing sleuths were Canadians Dr. Paul Prye (her first invention, in the earliest books) and Inspector Sands (a quiet, unassuming Canadian police inspector who might be the most endearing of her recurring inventions). In the California years, a few books featured either Joe Quinn, a rather down-on-his-luck private eye, or Tom Aragorn, a young, Hispanic lawyer.
Sadly, most of Millar's books are out of print in America, with the exception of the short story collection The Couple Next Door and two novels, An Air That Kills and Do Evil In Return, that have been re-issued as classics by Stark House Press in California.

In 1956 Millar won the Edgar Allan Poe Awards, Best Novel award for Beast in View. In 1965 she was awarded the Woman of the Year Award by the Los Angeles Times. In 1983 she was awarded the Grand Master Award by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition of her lifetime achievements.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 2 out of 5]

Murder in a dark and sinister house! With the wind howling and the snow falling and tempers fraying! Two hands find a throat!

The time and place: World War II Canada, a perilous road to a ski chalet, nefarious French separatists skulking about, an uncertain refuge from the freezing cold.

The cast: a bunch of annoyingly self-absorbed asssholes.

Margaret Millar seemed to have a fine time writing this one. She provided snappy pacing, snappier dialogue, a light touch, and an ease with establishing a wintry, foreboding setting. Her mysteries are solvable but still perplexing (I solved one but not the other). Her characters are arch and amusingly stylized... until, unfortunately, the amusement wore off and they became strident caricatures.

This was often fun and certainly no chore. But after a while it became a bit of a numbing experience to read about so many cardboard twits who mainly repeat the same character ticks and shticks. Our bossy, man-hungry heroine and one other character (a cold and haughty teenage girl slash amateur criminologist) were pleasingly atypical, but the rest of the cast transformed into obnoxious bores. Alas! Sometimes repetition does not make the heart grow fonder.



Love the cover! But I am sad to report that the scene it depicts does not appear in the book.

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 3 out of 5]

Synopsis: A bus filled with ski enthusiasts headed for a rustic chalet in Canada breaks down in the middle of a blizzard, sending a mismatched group of strangers out into the night to find shelter from the storm. Shelter is found by way of a dilapidated country mansion replete with a crazy old woman and her caregiver, who “accidentally” shoots at the skiers as they approach. Unlike the would-be skiers, the inhospitable situation only goes downhill from there.

Review: A who dunnit mystery in the middle of snowy nowhere. It gave me a very similar vibe to Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. A pack of snobbish, self-obsessed jerks each with their own ulterior motives drive each other through the roof while a certain few have nastier intentions than the rest. I think the main culprit was fairly obvious to spot early on, but there were a handful of other conspirators that I didn't quite expect.

There were too many characters to keep track of at first, most of them talked and acted exactly the same and didn't get much descriptions about them so it took me quite some time to fully figure out who was who. The mystery was done well even though the motives and identities of the villaIns were fairly simplistic, but one thing that really made the book charming was the surprisingly snappy dialogue and funny banter. Many of the jokes were genuinely clever and made the interactions between the survivors very entertaining, even if most of them weren't all that likable. I suppose it's an accomplishment in its own right to have a cast of unlikable jerks still be endearing and entertaining through wordplay alone.

***

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[Carla Remy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate Millar's sense of humor. I could relate to the snow. But this had way too many characters, none of them particularly likable. Maybe that's why the mystery, the plot in general, never took off.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think this has aged particularly well, and it probably wasn't all that great back in its day. The rapey "flirting" is especially cringe inducing, although the 35-year-old old maid is also kind of hilarious by modern standards. The ending is weak - too talky and drawn out, and too much happens off-screen.

Still, the set-up is pretty great, a few of the jokes still land, and I enjoyed myself.

Did I solve it? Mmmm... partly, although I'm really not sure how much sense it makes anyways.

Also, I love that cover.

[Jazz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 STARS | At times this mystery almost felt like an episode of the Twilight Zone, because you're not sure exactly what's happening or why. After two murders occur at the house, the group of marooned strangers become even more quarrelsome and distrustful of each other. In the end all is explained reasonably well and I did enjoy this short amusing book, which probably would have made a good screwball comedy film in the '40s.

[Bev · Rating 3 out of 5]

Margaret Millar, well-known for her psychological mysteries, ventures into dark parody in Fire Will Freeze (1944). She gathers together a disparate group of ski enthusiasts traveling by snowbus and bound for a snow lodge in French Canada. Among the passengers is the moneyed but manless Isabel Seton who has an inordinate curiosity about her companions; a rough adventurer with a pistol in his pocket, a mad poet and his doting patroness, a willful young woman and her wayward father, a couple of sets of honeymooner (some more honeyed than others), and a burlesque artist with a knack for self-preservation. When their snowbus breaks down in a snow storm and their bus driver disappears, the passengers set out to find where he's gone and (hopefully) find shelter.

They seek refuge at Rudd House--home of the insane Miss Frances Rudd and Floraine, the companion who has been hired to care for her. Before they even reach the front door someone takes a potshot at them with a rifle, but they'll soon find out that this is the least of their worries. During the night, a dead cat will be left in the bed that Isabel shares with Gracie (the burlesque dancer), the cut up remains of the bus driver's uniform will be discovered, someone will freeze to death after fall from a balcony, someone else will be strangled, and another will be shot at close range. Isabel spends her time snooping in the dark, bantering with Charles Crawford (while trying to convince him to help get to the bottom of the mystery), and digging up clues that don't seem to mean anything. She gets more work done on the mystery when she teams up with Gracie (when she can get Gracie to come out from behind the barricaded bedroom door)

If there’s a mystery I want to keep it a mystery. The only thing to do in a place like this is to get inside a room with somebody you can trust, put the furniture in front of the door and be prepared to yell like hell....

And eventually they sort it out...in a way.

The mystery and psychological suspense may not be quite what Millar fans are used to, but the humor more than makes up for it. The dynamic duo of Isabel and Gracie are great fun--it's a treat to watch the street-wise Gracie teach the "old-maidish" Isabel a thing or two. The dark, lonely house--isolated and snow-bound--is played to the hilt with madmen and madwomen roaming the halls, screams in the night, and flickering candles everywhere. And nobody knows if the crazy lady is the killer or not. An enjoyable romp through murderous comedy.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agatha Christie is considered the godmother of the cozy mystery, even though her books are tonally different than the cozies of today.

If you’re not familiar with the cozy mystery: quaint country side, quirky-but-endearing characters, random corpse, a place where murder rarely happens.

Nowadays, people dress up cozies with animals and recipes but when Christie was writing them, they had a tinge of the hardboiled in them. Not much; Christie will never be confused for Raymond Chandler. But just enough.

I don’t know if Margaret Millar’s Fire Will Freeze is a critique or satire of Christie’s work (which was popular at the time this was written) or maybe just her own response to it. It has the structure of a Christie mystery but it’s almost an anti-Christie. It’s a Christie book if all her characters were loathsome or annoying.

And that’s both a benefit and a drawback. I’m not a diehard Christie reader; some of her stuff is better than others and I appreciate her technical expertise. But what I often appreciate about Margaret Millar is, like Gillian Flynn today, how she’s able to make most of her characters so unsympathetic as to challenge the reader to care about them. It can make reading seem like a task for some but if you add a good plot to it, you have a fascinatingly readable book.

But the drawback is: the characters are dull in addition to being unsympathetic. And the mystery is fine, if imperfectly executed. Millar wrote this early in her career and I would have loved to seen a better version with her having a betters sense of her style. So all in all, it was a decent, subversive take on a familiar genre.

[Theunis Snyman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dark and terrifying mystery. People going by bus on a ski trip are during a storm stranded in a house where a crazy old lady and her caregiver lives. And then all sort of strange things, including murder, happens. Everything is quite inexplicable, but in the end all mysteries are neatly resolved. All the characters are nasty people. They are just as unpleasant as the weather outside. They are continually bickering with each other. There wasn’t even one with whom I sympathized. That means that you have to suspect everyone. I can’t believe that this a reflection of real life. And I don’t think I will ever go by bus to a ski resort.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is one of the few Margaret Millar mysteries i had never gotten around to reading. She is a brilliant writer, but has never been in the Top Ten names because she never had a series detective, like her husband, who wrote as Ross MacDonald. Like Joan Aiken, Millar has an unbridlged imagination and you never can be sure what her characters are going to do next. Glad I finally got to this one.

[Arthur Pierce · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this early (and more conventional) Margaret Millar novel quite entertaining, until the last chapter. The solution to the crimes was not at all satisfying, in my estimation, plus the whole thing got rather muddled. In short, I thought this story started out with a bang and ended with a whimper.

[Constance · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good mystery. Quick read. Really enjoyed the slang of the day... published in 1944.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

You've seen this before. A group of people stuck in an isolated spot and they start dying. An assorted group: a young couple run off to get married, she not quite cut Mother's apron strings. A middle-aged married couple, she not at all happy about the ski trip, let alone being stranded. A poet and his benefactor, a rich woman used to waving money around and getting what she wanted. A father and his college daughter, she with just enough education to be sure of her pronouncements on human behavior. And two singles: Isobel Seton, a thirtyish woman and Charles Crawford, a middle-aged man who on in the book cheerfully admits Crawford isn't his real name and Isobel has already noticed a clink when he bumps the bus that tells her he probably has a gun in his pocket.

Here's the set-up:

This group of folks are on a bus headed toward a ski lodge up in the Canadian Mountains. The bus breaks down, in this case one of the snow chains snaps. The driver gets off to fix it and it takes fifteen minutes before anyone notices he's disappeared. One passenger tries to crank the bus and the engine is dead.

They get off to follow the footprints while they are still visible. A blizzard has started up. The trail leads to an old mansion and two shots are fired over their heads before Charles Crawford waves and hollers.

There appears to be only two people and a cat in the three story mansion. Miss Frances Rudd and her nurse, a competent looking woman named Floraine. Miss Rudd, called imaginative by Floraine, nutty by the others in short order is the owner of the house. her family doesn't want her institutionalized.

Floraine doesn't want them in the house. "There's no food and not much fuel to heat the house. You will have to leave in the morning." She claims to know nothing of the bus driver.

The third floor has been closed for years, the locks and doorknob are rusty, the seams around the door puttied shut. Bedrooms are on the second floor. The power goes out, "the diesel generator acts up often."

As things quiet down for the night, Isobel Seton takes the opportunity to borrow a flashlight and look around. Contrary to what the nurse said, she finds plenty of food and a bin loaded with coal.

And she finds something else.

A jacket and hat, the bus driver's name on the jacket, the bus line emblem on the hat.

The next thing is a scream from one of the passengers. She'd found the cat on her bed, it's throat cut. They'd heard an earlier argument between Miss Rudd and Floraine about a pair of scissors. Miss Rudd is locked in her room.

The crowning end to the night is a scream that wakes the house and Floraine turns up missing. The house is searched and she can't be found.

Margaret keeps the reader guessing and throws in a number of twists that keep one off-balance. Those twist go all the way to the end .

[Zora · Rating 3 out of 5]

Millar was the wife of Ross MacDonald (who still gets talked about while she is pretty much ignored); she was a multiple award-winner who could write in several mystery subgenres, including gothic and noir.

This is a sort of locked-room mystery, set in an isolated house in Quebec during a blizzard. One person has disappeared and as the novel progresses more than one more is murdered. Whodunit?

What's great about this is the humor. I laughed aloud several times in the first 20 pages. What's less than great about it is that it's dated in its handling of point of view. She shifts from person to person but never reveals the guilty party's true thoughts. Today, that'd be seen as, in the first place, head-hopping and, in the second, cheating. (When you're in the guilty party's head, it's really unfair not to mention the guilt.) And really, there's no reason to do that shifting of POV.

I liked it enough I'll try a few others of hers the local library still has on hand.

[Glenn Hopp · Rating 2 out of 5]

The worst thing to say about this book is that its various elements fail to come together, and (second worst thing, I guess) that this disjointedness impedes the reader’s engagement. At times, the book seems a social satire, a suspense thriller, a Gothic romance, a whodunit with snow-bound travelers marooned in a house. The characters also lean toward the stereotypical. It is an early novel (1944) by Margaret Millar, who later wrote much better books, and last year or so I read three of them: The Iron Gates (1945), Beast in View (the Edgar Allan Poe award winner for best novel of 1955), and An Air That Kills (1957). Two stars mean “it was okay,” and that fits this excusable misfire by a talented novelist.

[Justus · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess the context of being in Canada in winter was not particularly interesting to me and unfortunately the setting of the old mansion wasn't fleshed out enough to capture my architect attention either. It could also be that I just didn't relate to the characters - and there were enough of them it was a bit of a pain to keep track of them all. In the end, the fact that the author was the wife of one of my favorite writers (in fact she was popular before Ross MacDonald)was enough for me to finish the book, but not enough to enjoy it.

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a delightful mystery and amazing for holding up as well as it does (not everything though - there's a scene that confuses consensual dominance with more assault overtone advancements that reads poorly). But largely a fun romp with an awesome feminist protagonist who is equal parts sassy, take charge and oblivious.

[Kat Walter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely dated, but entertaining nonetheless. Can’t say enough about independent, local bookstores—I came across a collection by this author that I would not have discovered otherwise. Like Patricia Highsmith, this author introduced the psychological thriller.

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Odd little book with a funny ending.

[Petra · Rating 4 out of 5]

this one was kinda scary in the beginning...entertaining!

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

A heavy snow storm. A bus stalled on a country road. An isolated mansion. And lots and lots of lovely twists. In short—typical Millar!

[J. Rubino · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed Millar's "Beast in View" and tried another of her novels, expecting the same well-crafted suspense ad strong characterization. Instead, I got a good setup that rambled on in a manner that would be, by today's standards, no better than first-draft quality.
A bus filled with skiers bound for a Canadian resort makes its way along a snowbound road when the bus stalls. The bus driver gets out to examine the problem and disappears, stranding his passengers. Desperate to find shelter, the passengers make their way to the nearest prospect, an isolated house, inhabited by an eccentric elderly woman and her nurse/caretaker.
As the mismatched group of vacationers try to come up with a plan for rescue, a pair of murders adds another layer of danger to their plight, and has them throwing suspicion on one another.
The poorly drawn characters, the irrational behavior, the weirdly inappropriate romantic elements and dialogue that seems more Jazz Age 1920s than 1940s, all work against the novel. Instead of escalating suspense with slyly embedded clues, there are too many characters to keep straight rattling around, with the explanations and resolution jammed into exposition at the end.
Sad to see one of the classic genres - the remote location, strangers in jeopardy mystery - so underwhelming.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I have read by this author, and have enjoyed both. As like the other book Vanish in an Instant, Millar brought the characters to life. An assortment of people taking a bus to a ski holiday resort in Canada are stranded on their journey by the bus driver, who leaves the bus to sort a problem with the chains on the tires, and disappears. After waiting some time for him to return, they realise that it just isn't going to happen, so they leave the bus to follow his footsteps in the snow. Eventually, they see a house in the distance and decide to head there. On getting closer to the house they are shot at, but this doesn't deter them, and they carry on to the house to get out of the cold and heavy snow which has been falling. Arriving there they are met by a woman who is unhinged to say the least, and her nurse. The nurse says they cannot stay there but they tell her there is no alternative. In a short time there are strange incidents occurring, and they seem to happen so quickly that is hard to stop reading on. The ending is not quite what is imagined, but very good.
I will be reading more from Margaret Millar.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wartime mystery has a few flaws, but the locked room, snowed in antics of the motley crew of random dislikeable people certainly kept me engaged. Millar has a flair for a fast moving plot and snappy dialogue. More than once I envisioned myself reading the raw material for a Preston Sturges film, or a Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur satire. A bit much of a deus ex machina, but that does not detract much from the absurdity of the characters and the sheer logistics of the movement around the blizzard- socked in house! No character did I have much sympathy for, but I was a bit surprised at the final wrap up. Millar is underappreciated by the general public, but her mystery writing colleagues provide well-deserved respect.

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars: An OK golden age mystery. I thought there were too many characters to keep track of without a list (as in some golden age mystery books), at least at first. But eventually each one was fleshed out. Writing was good and much was from the viewpoint of one of the characters who was an interesting person. Solution was a little far-fetched and some of it didn't make a lot of sense. For a better golden age mystery where murder takes place in an isolated house cut off by a blizzard, my choice is still Hake Talbot's "Rim of the Pit."

[Winry Weiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not perfect by far, but nevertheless a very enjoyable, twisting mystery that had me guessing - I did not see a lot of things coming.

A bit dated, and, again, I'm unhappy about the violence against cats. Also, the entire cast of characters is... well, not people I'd want to make acquaintance with, let alone be stuck in such a situation.

Still, it was a light and easy read, full of tongue-in-cheekiness that made me chuckle aloud several times.

[Maryanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a little disjointed with a cast of self-center egotistical characters stranded together on their way to a ski holiday in Canada. The story starts to come together as the disappearances and murders occur, but makes little sense of the plot and the purpose. The who, what, where, when are clear, it's the why that's murky, although it's an enjoyable and quick read.

[William Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. The first Millar I wasn’t engrossed by start to finish. Great premise, a riff on Ten Little Indian etc, and some well drawn characters. Some pacing lag in the last third, and occasionally wandering POV that didn’t seem as smooth or necessary as before. But still a solid mystery with some good red herrings. Icy winter time Canadian tale.

[✮💋adison💋✮ · Rating 1 out of 5]

i had such high hopes for this one :/
really, the only reason i kept reading this book was to finish it.
there was too many characters to start out with, not to mention how dragged out all the ‘twists’ were. it’s one of those books where i found myself saying ‘it’s not that great until you get to chapter 10’ and a good book doesn’t take 10 chapters to get interesting.

[nadia ( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛) · Rating 1 out of 5]

so boring

[Mladen Krečak · Rating 1 out of 5]

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