I'm running out of Ngaio Marsh books. :(
A Grave Mistake is one of the last of Marsh's books. It was written in the late 70s but set earlier than that I think and still has the Golden Age feel that most of her stories do. We have a small English village, a beautifully maintained Georgian house owned by Sybil Foster, a rather snobbish, but attractive middle-aged widow who has recently hired a talented gardener. She has a daughter who is engaged, much to Sybil's annoyance, to the son of a Greek millionaire instead of a man with a title. Sybil goes to a nearby hotel/spa for rest and maybe to secure the attentions of the doctor on staff. Of course, she ends up dead. At first, it's considered suicide, but evidence soon points to murder, which is why Alleyn is called in.
Alleyn has Fox with him on this case, and I do enjoy the pair of them. They get...
This is the second boat mystery I've read recently. This one is a river cruise that Alleyn's wife, Troy, has booked on a whim. David and I have talked before about doing a cruise on the Mississippi before and I started looking at options the other day, thinking that planning a vacation is always a good way to pass the time, especially when we're all stuck inside. Looks like we could do a 5 day round trip in from New Orleans for between $2000-$3000 per person. I requested a brochure. We could plan one around Amber's school schedule I think.
But, of course, the river cruise in Clutch of Constables includes a murder. All along, Troy has felt that something odd is going on. Granted, the folks on the ship are an unusual lot, as any random group of people in murder mysteries is, but even at that, she keeps getting strange feelings. I like Troy. She's a well-known painter, smart,...
The Final Curtain has a lot of similarities to many of Marsh's other mysteries. We've got a country house party. Inspector Alleyn doesn't show up until about halfway through. We've got a young couple who are meant to be together but have difficulties in the way. We've got a tie to both art and the theater. But Marsh winds these bits together with a pretty terrible family and comes up with an enjoyable mystery that had me stumped.
WW 2 is over and Agatha Troy is waiting for her husband, Inspector Alleyn to return from New Zealand. To pass the last couple of weeks, she accepts a commission that takes her to Ancreton Manor to paint a portrait of Sir Henry Ancred, a famous Shakespearean actor in his Macbeth costume. The first half-ish of the book shows us the Ancred family from Troy's point of view and they are overall a melodramatic, argumentative bunch, not people to enjoy spending...
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, it's a fictional dance, but the author tells us that she did use elements from a variety of traditional dances. Reading about the rehearsals, the performance, the costume and the history was fun. The dance is performed by the elderly blacksmiths, his five sons and a couple of other village men. They are also the most obvious suspects, especially the sons as they were the ones with the sword during the dance. Of course, the other performers have motives too. There are so many reasons to kill the old man: anger revenge, money, and just to get him out of the way.
Alleyn is called in to investigate. In a small...
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 care of the situation, but once she is hurt, Alleyn shortens his own vacation and goes to the island to watch out for her. And then, of course, there's the murder, even if it's not the murder you expect. Happily Alleyn's on the scene to take over the investigation.
The characters are a mixed lot. Some are bad stereotypes that tend to pop up in vintage mysteries, like the hysterical spinster and the drunk parents of the boy whose warts were "miraculously" healed. Some are more interesting, like the innkeeper's beautiful wife. We also have assorted other locals, including the doctor, the preacher and his wife, a young couple falling in love....
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 finally get to see a more polished Alleyn. He's still witty, but there no moments that are completely out of character as there were in the first two. These first few have been even more formulaic than vintage mysteries usually are. We meet the suspect, the murder occurs, Alleyn investigates, and finally there's a reconstruction where the murderer gives himself away.
This time around, the victim is the Home Secretary. When he is rushed to the hospital, we know he's doomed, there are just too many people who want him dead, including the communists sympathizers who have been sending him death threats and a doctor who was one of his close...
