Joanna Crane, a young widow with a small boy, welcomed the chance to tenant half a duplex house isolated in the English countryside in exchange for her services as cook-housekeeper to the grim old man who lived on the other side of the house. A sense of impending evil and the suspicion that the house contained a sidden watcher drove her to leave, but a heavy snow storm sealed her in and she and her child became the hostages of the old man's repulsive son, a double defector fugitive from the Russians. Damsel in distress beats clock in sturdy suspense tory with a satisfying touch of mature romance.