Shimada, Soji: Murder in the Crowded House.

A closed room mystery in an isolated Japanese mansion on the island of Hokkaido in which the house
which has been deliberately built crookedly plays a special part.  The owner has invited a number of
guests to spend Christmas with him and his daughter but the chauffeur of one of them fails to appear
the next morning.   He is found inside his locked room dead with no external evidence of any intruder
(It being Christmas there is a lot of snow).   Further deaths follow with the guests held in isolation by
the local police who are mystified by the events.   A renowned private sleuth is sent to solve the case
which he does.   The book is very slow-moving with the denouement and explanation of how the
crimes were committed taking some forty pages where the 'classic' detective tales of the 1920s to
1950s of took less than a page.   Certain parts of the elaborate set-up did need extended explanation
though.   Really only for the true addict of this type of crime novel.