Ngaio MarshRezensionen

A weekend party at an English county house and a murder occurs. Who would have guessed?

Meh. Took much too long to get to the actual mystery.

Good cozy mystery. I had some trouble keeping track of all the characters, perhaps because I was distracted. I always enjoy Ngaio Marsh and this was no exception.

I enjoyed this solid country house whodunit murder mystery. Almost half of the story is devoted to setting the stage for the puzzle presented to Chief Superintendent Alleyne when he comes on the scene. The body of the murder victim is missing until the closing chapters of the story.

The English country house is full of the usual eccentrics who regularly appear in these mystery stories. In this one, there's a contingent of convicted murderers who have served their sentences and been released from prison. For local colour atmosphere, beside the old house situated next to the moors, there's a neighbouring prison.

With the assistance of the local police Inspector Alleyne undertakes his investigation, and is belatedly joined by his trusty sidekick Inspector Fox. The identity of the killer is revealed in the very last chapter, at which point this reader learned he had been taken in by the author's masterful misdirection.

A good, but sometimes uneven, read.½

I love the bits about the black cat Lucy.

Summary: A comedic play in a small village to raise funds for the church to buy a new piano turns into a murder mystery when the pianist is shot when playing the opening notes of the prelude by a gun concealed within,

An amateur comedic play in a local village to raise money for a new church piano for the church hall. What could go wrong? In the Village of Vale-of-Pen-Cuckoo, quite a bit. Even though the cast is small and consists of local talents, bringing them together is a combustible mixture that brings to a head simmering troubles in the village that results in murder. The production is directed by Dinah Copeland, the daughter of Rector Copeland. She is the one person with some professional stage experience. She’s also the serious love interest of Henry Jerningham, son of the village squire and constable, Jocelyn Jerningham. Jocelyn and his cousin Eleanor Prentice both oppose the marriage, albeit for different reasons. Jocelyn is a member of the species of impoverished landholders and Henry needs to marry into wealth, not a qualification of the Rector and his daughter. Eleanor, a religious spinster, came to live with her cousin after the death of Jocelyn’s wife as a kind of lady of the manor. Dinah, she fears, will supplant her.

This is not her only jealousy. When she moved to Pen Cuckoo, she developed a complicated friendship with another spinster, Idris Campanula. They loved to gossip about the rest of the village but saw each other as rivals for the affections of the rector who is trying his darnedest not to get entangled with either of them, who come to him with their “confessions” to spend time in spiritual intimacy with him

Meanwhile, the village newcomer, Selia Ross, is apparently having an affair with the handsome Dr. Templett, who has an invalid wife at home. Her suggested play is the one adopted, to the consternation of the two spinsters. Subsequently, Selia receives an anonymous and threatening letter, reeking of Idris Campanula’s favorite scent. She shares it with Dr. Templett. Meanwhile, Eleanor comes across Henry and Dinah in a passionate embrace on the day before the play and harsh words are spoken by all. Later that day Eleanor, coming for her confession with the rector, shows up at the very moment Idris throws herself in the rector’s unwilling arms. She was unseen and leaves, calling to make an excuse for cancelling.

Still, this cast manages to make it to the day of the play. Eleanor, chosen to play as overture to the play the “Venetian Overture” by Ethelbert Nevin, is found in pain in her dressing room from an infected finger. The doctor insists she must not play and Idris steps in triumphantly with her Prelude in C by Rachmaninoff. The two ladies had competed at gatherings with these pieces for years. This sounds like a comedic soap opera, right?

And then Idris Campanula plays the first three notes, stepping on the soft pedal with the third…and the piano seems to explode. When the smoke clears, Idris is slumped dead, a gunshot through the head, fired from inside the piano. They discover a gun, a Colt 32 belonging to Jocelyn, rigged with a “Twiddletoy” apparatus to fire when the soft peddle was depressed. The gun had been mentioned the previous evening at a cast gathering, was left loaded with a warning card in a box in the library, easily accessed from outside during the day. Anyone could have accessed it

But who was the intended victim, Idris or Eleanor? Idris substituted for Eleanor at the last minute, but as we see, there were people with motives to kill each woman. When a major theft ties up local investigators, Alleyn and his team are called in, along with his “Watson,” Nigel Bathgate to unravel this strange murder. Early on, they discover that the “Twiddletoy” belonged to the village prankster, Georgie Biggins, who had rigged up a water pistol. Somehow, another person had substituted the Colt for the water pistol. But when and how? Another woman had played the piano an hour before, using the soft pedal, with no lethal effect. And the stage was occupied in preparation for the play after that.

Alleyn must piece together the surviving cast’s movements and figure out the significance of a box at the church hall window with some fragments of rubber, and an onion found on the scene. Meanwhile, all the principals are withholding information, closed as only a secluded village can be.

It seemed to me that the character of Bathgate plays a much more minor role than in previous works. We also learn Alleyn is engaged to Troy, but apart from a love letter at the end, she’s absent, pursuing her own work. And Alleyn? He seems at his refined best, asking the hard questions with a velvet touch, not surprised by the transgressions common to adult human beings, and willing to keep quiet the things not essential to the case, all the while gathering and arranging the threads until the climatic scene where he calls the cast together one last time….

The solution to the murder is just really unbelievable. It even gives a specific timeframe that's so ridiculously short plus relies on a bunch of people not noticing a bunch of things. At the end they even admit there's very little to pin it down on the murderer. The secret society subplot is goofy and doesn't make any sense either. Oh and there's a romance subplot too which is totally unconvincing and pointless but then they always are in mystery novels. There were a few sections which I had to read multiple times to understand because they were pointlessly complicated.

Overall the writing is serviceable and I read through like yeah sure whatever this is fine so maybe 2 stars but I'm rating 1 cause mystery novels hang together on a convincing conclusion and I didn't see it at all. Nothing else about it is interesting enough for me to care - no funny dialogue, no stand out characters. So yeah.

Oh also it uses the n word once. And what universe is it that someone can *remove another person's trousers* in the middle of a normal social get together and everyone just acts totally casual about it? This bullying is even given as a motive for murder later but when it happens I had to read a few times to be like what??? why

Some of the inconsistencies

What's with the whole secret society? They're a Russian one but 2 of the key figures are a Pole (who they murder) and someone who only speak English and Swedish. Why are they a communist society if they're centuries old? Why did the Pole give the knife to the victim in the first place? Oh and the Pole is referred to as speaking Russian and not Polish - why is he called a Pole?? How did the society even find out the Pole had given away the knife? When the society all get arrested, why did Alleyn come through the chimney when all the other police apparently got in fine at the same time by just walking in? I think he was hidden the whole time? I guess? Which is uh. Sounds very uncomfortable. What were the secret society even doing? They were arrested for sedition and treason but they didn't seem to do anything except murder each other. They're a big red herring subplot but none of their actions really make sense.

With the murder, the murderer is specifically allotted *exactly 8 seconds* to get from the bathroom to downstairs, do the murder and turn the lights off. His method relies on the victim being in *exactly* the right place to get stabbed (he could never have turned around, he couldn't have moved away from the stairs). In those 8 seconds, after apparently sliding down a banister, he got the knife in EXACTLY the right spot between bones that was considered so impressive that the murderer needed to know anatomy well. His alibi was 2 people thinking he was in the bath but as well as those 8 seconds he also got out the bath to get a glove from his wife's dressing room. That would take some time. Surely someone would have noticed the splashing had stopped? Bath noises are actually pretty distinctive - you can usually tell when someone's getting out. And there's door noises, footsteps too. In fact, the servant who comes into give Nigel shaving water would surely have seen him on the landing? The timescale is even less than the 8 seconds allotted and it seems extremely unlikely. He'd also have dripped water EVERYWHERE! I can't believe nobody noticed. (Realised iirc he actually wasn't in the bath. He was just pretending to me. Even then splashing about would get you wet and you'd drip. And the noises are noticeably different when you're not in with your whole body. Ah well) The attempts in the scene before the murder to make it work just... don't. He also decided to do this plan even though he only had a single glove - he tried to avoid leaving prints but completely failed. Surely his wife would have thought "oh I'm sure I put those gloves in the drawer" too and realised something was up - but she doesn't; Alleyn actually misleads here by claiming he found one in the hall so the wife doesn't question it.

When Alleyn does a totally pointless "reconstruction" (he asks Nigel to play the murderer and then goes off at him when he shows a slight hesitancy... before asking the person he knows to be the murderer to do it... and him doing it was essential to his terrible plan... so why attack Nigel??)
the murderer is in no way revealed except for Alleyn accusing him and him saying "damn you".
Which he didn't need to do and would hardly hold up in court.

Also the motive of "oh he was mad at the victim for flirting with his wife" seems kind of weird given he never even attempted to stop it in any way at all and apparently let it go on for years and years. The victim seems like an utter prick by the way. Can't pretend I felt any sympathy towards him.

There's probably more but just. blurgh. Bad. Maybe also I'm stupid! I don't know

Summary: A struggling New Zealand spa by some sulphur springs becomes the scene of espionage, the visit of a famous stage actor, and murder.

This is one of Marsh’s New Zealand novels, in which Roderick Alleyn is engaged in anti-espionage World War II. The story is set at a down-at-heel struggling resort by the fictional town of Harpoon, near the coast on New Zealand’s North Island. The resort, a spa located near sulphur springs and pits is run by Colonel Claire, his wife, and daughter, Barbara and son, Simon. They’ve recruited the Colonel’s brother-in-law, Dr. James Ackrington, a retired physician of some reknown to be the house doctor. The “staff” is rounded out by Bert Smith, an often-drunk handyman, and Huia, from the nearby Maori village, who serves as housekeeper and cook.

The main “guest” at the start is Maurice Questing, a businessman. It becomes apparent that he has an interest in the spa, having given the Colonel a loan on which he has fallen behind. Questing has big plans for the spa and one of his first acts is to advertise it, resulting in recruiting a distinguished guest. Geoffrey Gaunt is a Shakespearean actor with a leg that is paining him. He’s accompanied by his secretary, Dikon Bell, and his dresser, Colley.

Questing is not well liked. Both Ackrington and Simon suspect him of spying. He’s been seen on a volcanic peak, near a Maori preserve. In a couple of instances, flashing lights had been observed at times that coincided with the sinking of ships. Ackrington has written to Alleyn, a friend, sharing his suspicions. At one point, Questing was driving in sight of a railroad signal when he waved Bert Smith across a railroad bridge when a train was coming, claiming later that the signal wasn’t working, when it was. Subsequently he alienates Gaunt,

During all this, another unusual guest, Septimus Falls turns up, ostensibly to undergo treatments for lumbago. Simon suspects him to be in league with Questing, based on witnessing him tapping his pipe in what sounds like Morse code.

You guessed it. Questing ends up dead, falling into one of the dangerous sulfur pits. And there is no shortage of suspects with motives–Claire, Ackrington, Smith, Simon, Gaunt, and the mysterious Septimus Falls, as well as several people from the Maori village. Septimus Falls, who had been walking at some distance behind Questing, heard him scream, and subsequently gets them all discussing their stories, to prepare for questioning from Detective Sergeant Webley, the local man.

In all this, Alleyn is noticeably absent and you keep waiting for him to turn up, one of the interesting twists in this story. There are really three mysteries in the story: who is the spy, who murdered Questing, and where is Alleyn? Have fun figuring all that out. I sure did!

With Alleyn in New Zealand on an extradition case over Christmas, Troy is staying with a client as she paints his picture.

There's a christmas pagent and afterwards the main participant disappears. Considering that many of the staff are ex-offenders (murderers) and the missing man known to be disliked by the staff, it's not long before people are worried. Alleyn returns earlier than expected and soon gets involved.

Not perhaps the best one of Marsh's - the "oncers" are a little too over wrought and some of the other characters under developed. Once again, Troy is in the forefront during the first half of the book, but is soon faded to background once Alleyn turns up.

Another great Marsh book, and I often love how she can put across so much in so few words.[return][return]Anyway, this is the story of lost loves, previous lives, lies, blackmail, murder, rich people and expensive items.[return][return]Sybil, a widowed woman who suffers from "her nerves" takes to the local hotel/hospital, where several weeks later she is found dead of a suspected suicide. The inquest can find no reason for the suicide (despite her daughter getting engaged to a rich but "unsuitable" - to Sybil - man) and her deplorable stepson from a previous marriage returning to the family home. However, the discovery of a new will, leaving money to the new Gardener and her new doctor, and writing her daughter out of it all if she goes ahead with the marriage makes people start looking deeper.

full review can be found here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/bookreview-enter-a-murderer-by-ngaio-mar...

A later book, where Alleyn, Troy and their young son Ricky are in France partly on holiday, partly for Alleyn to investigate the goings on at a specific Château, where the authorities believe there is a major drug ring going on.

Travelling through by train, one of their fellow passengers is taken ill, allowing Alleyn to gain access to the château where one of the residents is a well known doctor. All three of the Alleyns remain in town, with Miss Truebody as a cover, and allows Alleyn further access to the place.

It soon becomes clear that there is something not right with the place, including some very cultish behaviour and some drug taking. Alleyn's cover is almost blown several times by people who know either him or Troy, but he gets away with it. A young Ricky (about 5 I would guess) gets kidnapped and rescued. Inspector Fox's absence is countered by the presence of the useful Raoul, who gets involved in the denouement at the end.

Nice to have a change from New Zealand or England as a setting, even if the majority of people are English.

Setting in for a cozy night of brandy and darts at the pub, an inebriated lawyer suffers a seemingly harmless dart puncture. But within moments of his injury, the unlucky barrister loses more than a simple game of darts--he loses his life. Called in to investigate this alleged accident, Inspector Roderick Alleyn wonders about the rules of this friendly bar game--and probes into a pub full of motives for murder

I have a feeling that I've read this book before, but remembered little enough of what went on to find the re-read worth while.

The main protagonists are a group of friends from London, who often spend their holidays in the village: Luke Watchman, an eminent lawyer, Sebastian Parish, celebrated actor, and Norman Cubitt, painter, who is painting a portrait of Parish in the countryside near the village.

Since their holiday a year before, a new character has appeared on the scene: Robert (Bob) Legge, a secretive character with an interesting trick with darts. On the second night of the holiday, and after a decent amount of alcohol all round, Watchman lies dead on the pub floor, having died from cyanide poisoning, apparently injected via a dart wielded by Legge.

Through various technicalities, Alleyn and Fox end up traveling down to Devon to investigate. Fingers are pointed almost instantly at Legge, who is proving to be rather erratic in his behaviour, in no small part due to the 6 year sentence previously given as a result of Watchman's work at the bar. However, Fox and Alleyn find that everyone in the room at the time of the death has a motive for seeing the barrister dead. It all boils down to who could have got the cyanide into the Watchman's system. It's then up to Alleyn and Fox to prove precisely who killed Watchman, even when it means a risk to life and limb for the two policemen.

This is number 9 in the Alleyn series, and Marsh is on a roll. Ever so slightly racist (looking back with 20:20 hindsight about someone "visiting the Jews" - i.e. the moneylenders) but generally working class vs upper class struggles. There are plenty of over the top characters, including the local barman, the fat Irish painter, the actor etc. Some nice small touches in the relationship between Alleyn and Fox helps lighten the mood a little. Not one of the best Alleyn stories, and not one of the worst, so a middle ranking rating.

Ricky Alleyn, son of Troy and Roderick Alleyn, is taking an island break in an attempt to write a book.

The niece of the local riding school owner dies after making a difficult jump and is found later in a ditch. Meanwhile one or more people are involved in drug running between France and England.

Not long after Rory arrives in town, Ricky disappears.

Lateish story (I think written in the mid 70s), where the story line is grittier than Marsh's contemporaries(no cream teas here, heroin addiction and drug running is the name of the game, as is Hellfire and brimstone preachers)

Number 5 in the Alleyn series, and it's pre-Troy. Alleyn takes a long holiday to New Zealand, falls in with a touring acting company and gets pulled into investigating the murder of one of the Company's owners.

The book sets up characters that are repeated in later books (e.g. the Noble Aboriginal Doctor). As usual the investigations take part over the following 48 hours after the death of the main character and there is a lot of interviewing of the secondary characters, including the dead man's wife, the man who was in love with her, the drunken ex-actor/door manager etc.

Marsh split her time between England and New Zealand, and her love of the latter country is evident, especially at the end - the New Zealand tourist board should dig out these books again and make sure they're prize of place!

World War II rages on, and Inspector Alleyn continues as the Special Branch’s eyes and ears in New Zealand. While his primary brief is spy-catching, he’s also happy to help with old-fashioned policing. Flossie Rubrick, an influential Member of Parliament and the wife of a sheep farmer, is murdered. Had she made political enemies? Had a mysterious legacy prompted her death? Or could the shadowy world of international espionage have intruded on this quiet farm?

I listened to this as an audiobook in 2012, one of the few not narrated by James Saxon. I recently found a paper copy, slim enough to fit the handbag, so read again before letting it go.

This story was originally published in 1945,at the tail end of WWII.

On loan to New Zealand, investigating potential anti-war sympathies and trade secrets, Alleyn is called onto a sheep farm. The farm owner's wife - a local MP - died in suspicious circumstances 16 months before (she ended up in a wool bale). The couple are childless, and Flossie has spent her younger years collecting waifs and strays who still reside in the house - some of them people continue designing items for the war effort. It has been rumoured that some of those designs had been leaked (turns out to be true), which gives Alleyn the cover to go in and investigate.

The first third of the book has a lot of talking to set up the story and collect the deposition of those who remain on site who remember the incident. Lots of twists and turns, some suspects spotted earlier than others. Lots of talking in the first half, but that's one of the ways to get the info to the reader and a lot less dry than other routes.

Spread over a couple of days on a working farm in the middle of nowhere, Alleyn needs to find out not only who killed Flossie, but what he can about the stolen plans. Many of the group are hiding something from him, either to protect themselves or each other, even the dead.

It's always difficult to review books like this without giving away some of the plot so: sub 300 pages, with a large if rather restrained cast and the threat of WWII still hanging over people, and it's a decently plotted book, even if some of the events are sign posted a large distance away

At Sir Hubert Handesley's country house party, five guests have gathered for the uproarious parlor game of "Murder." Yet no one is laughing when the lights come up on an actual corpse, the good-looking and mysterious Charles Rankin. Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives to find a complete collection of alibis, a missing butler, and an intricate puzzle of betrayal and sedition in the search for the key player in this deadly game

Cant believe I've read so many Alleyn books, but have taken this long to get to read #1.

This book starts with Nigel Bathgate, junior reporter and ongoing stalwart of the series, being invited to a country house weekend with his cousin. There he meets Angela, and a number of other characters, and during a game of "murders" finds his cousin murdered with a knife in his back.

Alleyn arrives to investigate, still young and an Inspector (somehow morphing into the better known CHIEF inspector near the end of the book. The other usual cast - such as Fox - dont make it into this first novel. There is a little diversion (Maguffin) over the Russian community in London, which allows for the dagger to be used in the murder.

Alleyn is a little moodier than in later novels, still being young and possibly not fleshed out as in later novels. Not sure I would have continued with the series had I come across this book first.

Rory Alleyn, giving a lecture, recounts a particularly interesting case involving his wife, art fraud, and a criminal team upon a boat.

Alleyn's wife Troy, having just had an exhibit installed, is about to return to London when she sees a last minute cancellation on a 5 day boat trip around "Constable Country". Knowing that her husband is in America on a lecture tour, and that she would be returning to an empty flat after an exhausting time preparing for the show, she takes the trip on the spur of the moment.

There she meets people of several different nationalities, including the English born doctor (of an Ethiopian father), an Australian priest, a rather annoying and intense English woman and an American brother and sister.

Troy finds out that her cabin was to be taken by a Greek man who has subsequently found dead in London.

Troy writes several letters to her husband, giving her impressions of not only the passengers but some of the peculiar events that happen to her in the first few days. Alleyn is back on the plane home by the time the first body is found.

Troy is (conveniently) shipped off to a local hotel as the book's focus shifts to her husband and his investigation of racism, art forgery, murder and crime syndicates.

This was an audiobook from Audible. and read by James Saxon (who has read other books, including others by Marsh). He is very capable in doing multiple accents and this certainly aids the "listening experience". (A brief look implies that he died in 2003).

The multiple timelines was a little difficult to settle to (Alleyn giving a talk about a time he was in America giving a talk whilst his wife was getting involved in an art crime), but on the whole, it was a diverting and pleasant time spent.

I listened to both the Abridged and Unabridged versions of this from Audible. The narrator for the Unabridged was less

Not the best Marsh book I've chanced upon. It plods along for far too long, a lot of the story could have been stripped away to speed things up and stop the reader/listener getting bored. [return][return]The murder itself doesnt happen until half way into the book at which point it does speed up, but there's still an awful lot of sitting around and talking.[return][return]Alleyn (as Alleyn) doesn't turn up until the end, (although he's in the book from the middle). [return][return]The narrator - i got this as an audiobook - was reasonable, having quite a few different voices to contend with, although I did find some of his NZ characters a bit grating (I only hope that that was the point).

When lovely Cara Quayne dropped dead to the floor after drinking the ritual wine at the House of the Sacred Flame, she was having a religious experience of a sort unsuspected by the other initiates. Discovering how the fatal prussic acid got into the bizarre group's wine is but one of the perplexing riddles that confronts Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn when he's called to discover who sent this wealthy cult member to her untimely death

I need an additional favourite crime writer like I need a hole in the head!

I believe this is the 4th in the series, written during the 1930s and therefore a contemporay of Agatha Christie.

The dialogue between Alleyn and Fox is witty (but I can see the potential to be annoying if it was the same in every book), and there's some implied world-awareness put into the book about the acolytes that got the message across without being too in-your-face about it ("I think the Greeks may have a word for them" being just one example).

Anyway, cant believe that I've got this far without reading Ngaio Marsh books before, and need to keep an eye out for more!

I'm reading/listening to Ngaio Marsh/Inspector Alleyn stories out of order, so it can be a tad confusing when presented with an early in [return]the cycle story.[return][return]Originally published in 1935, this has the stereotypical characters - the out and out communists, still enamoured with the idea of the "all work together to over turn the upper class" (even though they'll happily take money to do a job until the reigning class have been overturned); the upper class Harely street private doctors and nurses; the MPs who'll work through whatever pain to pass the necessary bills only to die after being operated on.[return][return]It's not too taxing a book, bit silly (but that's the fun of Alleyn stories) so enjoyable none the less

Better than "Colour Scheme" as it moves along faster despite the fact that once again the murder doesnt occur until middle of the story.[return][return]This wasnt the best recording (downloaded from Audible) I've had, as the narrator's voice changes enough to make it appear that there are more than one narrator.[return][return]Once again, the story is set in a theatre, where a derelict theatre is resurrected, and a new play is performed, having been inspired by the discovery of a glove belonging to Shakespeare's grandson. Months into the production, the night porter is killed......

La Somita, an American Italian opera singer is in New Zealand on part of a world tour. She has been followed down under by a

With Alleyn in New Zealand on an extradition case over Christmas, Troy is staying with a client as she paints his picture.

There's a christmas pagent and afterwards the main participant disappears. Considering that many of the staff are ex-offenders (murderers) and the missing man known to be disliked by the staff, it's not long before people are worried. Alleyn returns earlier than expected and soon gets involved.

Not perhaps the best one of Marsh's - the "oncers" are a little too over wrought and some of the other characters under developed. Once again, Troy is in the forefront during the first half of the book, but is soon faded to background once Alleyn turns up.