Dead Mountaineer's Hotel

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (Russian: Отель "У Погибшего Альпиниста", Transliteration: Otel "U Pogibshego Al'pinista") is a 1970 science fiction detective novel written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It is also known as Inspector Glebsky's Puzzle in English translation.

[edit] Plot summary

Nowadays, in the Alps. A police inspector, Mr. Peter Glebsky, takes a vacation and goes to the Dead Mountaineer's Hotel, a small resort located in a secluded valley.

The resort is very nice, yet populated by bizarre guests: Mr. Moses, an old and rich man with highly eccentric manners, his stunningly beautiful wife, Mr. du Barnstocre, an illusionist accompanied by his child (an adolescent of unidentifiable sex), Mr. Simonet the obsessed physicist, and so on.

One evening, shortly after Mr. Glebsky arrives, an avalanche occurs, blocking the entrance to the valley and cutting the heroes from outside world.

At the same time, one of the recent guests is found dead in his room, his door locked and his neck horribly twisted. Mr. Glebsky will have to start an investigation. Soon he begins to understand that things are not simple at all. Indeed, what kind of a sane police inspector would suggest that some of his suspects are aliens?