A delightful lot of chaos that all works itself out in the end.

The journey begins on a British train that Inspector Appleby is taking to a remote English country town, where he has been sent on behalf of Scotland Yard. When the carriage clears out, the man across from him, who has been busily reading religious books, strikes up a conversation, offering Appleby something to read – if religions don’t interest him, perhaps something about Ruritania or Racing or Reptiles or the history of Rome… For, as it turns out, the stranger is writing an encyclopedia and has reached the volume of “R”. The stranger’s name is Everard Raven. He often takes the train from London to a station near his home and is very familiar with it.

Raven knows the route well and advises Appleby that, by the time they reach his connection to his destination, it will have left, owning to the eccentricities of the engineer. As they explore the other options available to Appleby at that late hour, each is knocked down: one station is filled with pigs; in another town, the hotel has burned down; in another, the only woman who offers a rooming house has died. The only logical option, Raven determines, is for Appleby to come home with him, and restart his journey in the morning. Appleby resignedly accepts. And the car fills up again, with a host of strange people that join the journey one at a time as the train stops at each station.

As it turns out, three of these people are Raven’s brothers, and two are his niece and nephew, all of whom reside in the family home. When they disembark at the Raven’s stop, it turns out that the conveyance to the Raven estate is a horse-drawn carriage of an old-fashioned kind, driven by an old family retainer who bears the family resemblance, in both looks and eccentricity. Unfortunately, the carriage is filled with potatoes and horse-feed and so many other supplies that only the niece and Appleby will fit – and that, with inappropriately physical proximity – and the other Ravens are forced to ride on the roof.

And then, just as Appleby is adjusting to being tossed about in the pitch dark with uncomfortable corners of boxes and sacks poking into him, and is establishing a little mild flirtation, when the carriage begins to fill up with water. Poking his head out the window, Appleby realizes that the carriage has become stuck in a ford, the driver has cut the horse from the traces and is on the far side of the rising stream. Behind him on the other bank, he can hear the male Ravens calling to driver to rescue Appleby and the niece, Judith, but the driver cannot hear them – and, when Appleby tosses out some of the cargo, preparatory to swimming for shore with Judith, the carriage begins to float downstream, which finally merges with a river, carrying Judith and Appleby with it.

Did I mention it was snowing?

In a moment of moonlight, the two manage to get to shore but then the clouds return, the temperature drops, and Judith becomes disoriented in the darkness. Finally, desperately cold, they take refuge in a haystack where they remove their clothes and share body heat, in a very proper, English way. Finally, the snow stops, the moon returns, they put back on their clothes, and resume their journey. Just as rescue is nigh, the moonlight reveals the head of the hapless coachman rolling about in their path.

As it turns out, he has not been decapitated but he is dead, buried up to his neck in a snowbank.

This, as it turns out, has been predicted by a Raven who lived in the mid-19th century, an author who wrote strange and macabre tales that took place in the English countryside – and, not only strange and macabre, but oddly prophetic. His stories have predicted not only the head, but a pig transformed to marble, a missing boy, a milkmaid who goes mad trying to milk the statue of a cow, and a number of other mysterious occurrences, some of which turn out to be related to Appleby’s original assignment.

Every chapter plunges Appleby and the local Inspector into more and more madness, as they ricochet between the Raven estate, Long Dream, and towns with names like Linger, Yatter, Drool, Snarl, Sneak, and Sleep’s Hill.

The book becomes increasingly chaotic, with surprises around every turn, while at the same time, Appleby begins to wrap up the mysteries in a systematic way.

Utterly delightful.

And just what is needed after a day of feasting and a return trip during Thanksgiving travel nonsense.