Dame Ngaio Marsh (23 April 1895 – 18 February 1982), born Edith Ngaio Marsh, was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre director. She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966.
Internationally Marsh is known primarily for her creation Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective who works for the Metropolitan Police (London). Thus she is one of the “Queens of Crime” alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Gladys Mitchell, and Margery Allingham.
Swing, Brother, Swing is fairly typical for Marsh. We have a dysfunctional family, headed by Lord Pastern and Baggott, whose newest obsession is playing the timpani for a swing band. Pastern’s step-daughter, Fee, is not quite but almost engaged to Carlos, who plays the accordion. Carlos is sleazy and overly …
I love mysteries, but if I had to narrow the genre down to my favorite type, I’d pick vintage mysteries. Even narrower, I’d go with country house mysteries, preferably at Christmastime, but winter will do. Death and the Dancing Footman is one of those. Our Inspector Roderick Alleyn doesn’t show …
Death of a Fool takes place around the winter solstice. In South Mardian, a sword dance/fertility ritual/mummer play is performed every year, but this time, the fool (the father) is actually beheaded. I don’t know anything about English folk dances, but the dance featured in Death of a Fool is interesting. Granted, …
Emily Pride is an old friend/French teacher of Inspector Alleyn and she has been receiving death threats, mostly because she want to shut down a small island’s tourist trade. She recently inherited the island and finds all the hoopla around the falls distasteful. She heads off to the island to take …
I’ve gone back and finally read the first 3 of Ngaio Marsh’s Inspector Alleyn series, and actually read them in order to boot. Each one of these early entries is a bit better than the one before. In The Nursing Home Murder, which actually takes place in a hospital, we …
I do love a good vintage mystery and in Enter a Murderer, Marsh takes us behind the scenes in a theater, which she does so well. In addition to a mystery writer, she was a theater director and knew the habits of everyone from actresses to stage managers to dressers. …
