White for a Shroud (1947) by Don Cameron

Donald Clough Cameron was an American journalist who worked as a crime reporter for the Detroit Free Press and the Windsor Star, a Canadian newspaper, in the 1920s, but in the 1930s Cameron moved to fiction and began writing detective novels, pulp stories and comic books – reportedly making some notable contributions to the Batman mythos. Such as creating a precursor to the Batcave and introducing Alfred as Bruce Wayne's butler. Cameron also co-created and wrote the earliest Superboy stories in More Fun Comics. But what about his legacy as a mystery writer?

Cameron wrote six detective novels, three of which, Murder's Coming (1939), Grave Without Grass (1940) and And So He Had to Die (1941), featured a young criminologist, Abelard Voss. The other three titles, Death at Her Elbow (1940), Dig Another Grave (1946) and White for a Shroud (1947), appear to be standalone novels, but none of them have been reprinted since the mid-1950s. And they've all been pretty much forgotten today.

I know Anthony Boucher lukewarmly praised Dig Another Grave, a story of newsmen, racketeering and cafe society, as "acceptable" in The Anthony Boucher Chronicles: Reviews and Commentary (2009). So not very encouraging to start digging around, but what secured this long-forgotten writer a spot on my wishlist was a 2014 review, posted on Past Offenses, of White for a Shroud. A review describing a fascinating detective story set in a small, isolated Michigan town paralyzed by an unforgiving blizzard, an avalanche of snow and frozen corpses – dug out of the snowbanks all over town. White for a Shroud finally made it to the snow-topped peak of Mt.-to-be-Read!

Red Rock County is a small community of "1,300-odd men, women and children" are facing "a storm that may rank with the worst on record," which will isolate them to their tiny corner of the world for the better part of a week.

The "snow was an aerial avalanche of glassy points" that choked highways, ditches and streets, blotted out railways and "rose like floodwater in the Upper Michigan forests." Snow blocked the doorways of houses and stores that were laboriously excavated, replacing the familiar storefronts with "doorways in the snow," reinforced by planks and bearing makeshift signs. A wide and lofty tunnel had been dug from a local bar to the keep the local day laborers warm as everything around them has come to a grinding halt. So, as all they can do is sit around, drink cheap whiskey and hate, there are still "plenty of barroom fights."

Andrew Brant, editor and owner of the Red Rock Reporter, remarks to Sheriff Ed Worth that, statistically, there are two murderers in Red Rock because "one in every six hundred and fifty will commit murder" and its 1,300-odd citizens have now "anything to do but murder" – a remark that would come back to haunt him later that day. And the problem concerns two of his loyal, long-time friends, John and Ella Macfarlane, who get stuck up to their necks in coldblooded murder! Brant picked up the rumor that Macfarlane is closing down his paper mill for the rest of the winter, but when goes out to investigate, he discovers Macfarlane's unconscious body on the floor of the foreman's room. A hunting cap, a fur-lined mitten and blood on the conveyor belt of the wood chopper suggests the unpopular straw boss, Ralston Crane, had been disposed of in "the thousands of gallons of pulp and acid" of the paper mill's pulp room. A perfect murder with "no possible way of proving the corpis delicti."

Macfarlane has no memory of what happened, but thinks he could have thrown him in and turned on the machine. Brant is not prepared to hand over his friend to the police and decided to make everyone believe Crane lost his way in the snow, which apparently was not uncommon at the time. Brant expects stories to appear in the newspapers about "farmer who had died between their barns and houses, motorists who had frozen in their car" and "children who had lost their ways and would never return home." Unfortunately, Macfarlane is shot and seriously wounded that night. And then, the frozen bodies begin to turn up.

This is where the plot of the story becomes nigh impossible to discuss in detail without tearing through the paper-thin layers that make up the whole plot.

I guess the plot is best described as a chain reaction, one thing leading to another, which gives the illusion of a tangled scheme, but there's really nothing clever, or inspired, to be found in any of the razor thin, poorly clued plot-strands – except for the storyline between Brant, John and Ella. White for a Shroud is an average detective novel with a, on a whole, a weak plot that was propped up the beautifully depicted, snow-buried setting. So still a perfectly acceptable, relatively short book to kill two or three hours with during one of those long, cold winter days. As long as you don't expect a stone cold classic.