Cameron: White for a Shroud

It was a blizzard. The wind, lashing across Lake Superior, buried the whole of the Upper Michigan peninsula beneath an avalanche of snow. It choked highways and ditches and streets, blotting out railroads and isolating towns. And three times in two days it wove a shroud for—murder. Andrew Brant, editor and owner of the Red Rock Reporter, went out into the storm to check on a rumor that the local paper mill was going to close. Arriving at the mill, he found its proprietor and his own best friend, grizzled, obstinate John Macfarlane prone upon the floor, while the new assistant manager, mysterious, shifty Ralston Crane seemed suddenly to have vanished. Brant had his own ideas where Crane might have disappeared. It was not into thin air, and the mystery of Crane’s whereabouts was to catch up not only Brant and Macfarlane, but also the latter’s young wife Ella and pretty Carol Johnson of the Reporter staff in a whirlwind of suspicions, hate, blackmail and violence before it was at length dramatically unraveled. Not the least attractive figure in this unusual small-town mystery is the shrewd, kindly sheriff, Ed Worth. Nor will the tortured principals of the tale, moving ghostlike through the storm, be easily forgotten.

Publishing Note

Published in 1947.