Review: VINTAGE MURDER, Ngaio Marsh - audio book

• available from Audible.com
• first published in 1937
• Narrated by: James Saxon
• Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins 
• Unabridged Audiobook
• #5 in the Roderick Alleyn series

Synopsis (Audible.com)

A touring theatre company in New Zealand forms the basis of one of Marsh’s most ambitious and innovative novels.

New Zealand theatrical manager Alfred Meyer wanted to celebrate his wife’s birthday in style. The piece de résistance would be the jeroboam of champagne which would descend gently into a nest of fern and coloured lights on the table, set up onstage after the performance.

But something went horribly wrong. Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn witnessed it himself. Was Meyer’s death the product of Maori superstitions? Or something much more down to earth?

My Take

The action takes place in 1936. Many of the characters talk about the impact of the previous world war, and there is a sense of another war to come.

Ngaio Marsh drew heavily on her theatrical background for this plot. Roderick Alleyn has come to New Zealand for a holiday, and finds himself travelling on a train with a British touring theatre company. He finds he actually knows two of the female actors. The manager tells everyone that someone has tried to push him off the train.

The company gets off the train and Alleyn stays with them and so is there when the murder takes place. Although he has been travelling incognito he joins forces with the local detectives to investigate the crime.

Marsh also uses this novel to talk extensively about Maori culture and the tensions between natives and whites. Roderick Alleyn is very much taken with New Zealand.

In this audio version, read by a very British actor, there is an attempt to give each character a very distinctive voice. I felt that sometimes it was a bit over the top, but in general was well done, because I really did get to "know" each character by the voice used.

My rating: 4.1


I've also reviewed
A MAN LAY DEAD
TIED UP IN TINSEL
4.3, DIED IN THE WOOL
THE NURSING HOME MURDER
4.2, DEATH IN ECSTASY 

Review: DEATH IN ECSTASY, Ngaio Marsh

• Format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 1262 KB
• Print Length: 752 pages
• Publisher: Harper (July 18, 2013)
• first published 1936
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00D0VYEB2
• source: I bought it

Synopsis (Amazon)

Who slipped cyanide into the ceremonial wine of ecstasy at the House of the Sacred Flame? The other initiates and the High Priest claim to be above earthly passions. But Roderick Alleyn discovers that the victim had provoked lust and jealousy, and he suspects that more evil still lurks behind the Sign of the Sacred Flame…

My Take

This was #4 in Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn series (although Marsh's first novel was published only in 1934, two years earlier).
It features the team of Detective Inspector Alleyn, his offsider Fox, and journalist Nigel Bathgate. It all begins when Bathgate enters the House of the Sacred Flame, a new religious sect not far from his flat, in search of amusement, and witnesses the death of a woman from poisoning. She has been participating in a ceremony where a chalice of wine is handed around a small circle of people and is finally drunk by her. Bathgate catches the unmistakeable smell of bitter almonds.

Cara Quayne was an extremely wealthy woman who was known to have left most of her fortune to the House of the Sacred Flame and to it's priest. This was her first occasion as the Sacrificial Vessel. She had been training for a month for the event.

To make sure the reader is up to speed, Alleyn and Bathgate draw up a list of suspects with motives at least twice. The author drops a couple of large hints about the identity of the murderer, which I should have picked up but didn't. There's a matter of missing bearer bonds, addiction and drug running, and entrapment, but in the long run Alleyn would not have solved the case without help from a couple of suspects.

It is an interesting novel because there is mention of how other authors like Agatha Christie would have fleshed out a plot like this.

I have read this for my participation in Crime Fiction of the Year Challenge @ Past Offences

My Take: 4.2 

I have also reviewed
A MAN LAY DEAD
TIED UP IN TINSEL
4.3, DIED IN THE WOOL
THE NURSING HOME MURDER

Review: THE NURSING HOME MURDER, Ngaio Marsh

• first published 1935
  
• 187 pages
• ISBN 978-0-00-651253-0

Synopsis (Amazon)

Ngaio Marsh's bestselling and ingenious third novel remains one of the most popular pieces of crime fiction of all time. Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse Jane Harden are almost too nervous to operate.

The emergency case on the table before them is the Home Secretary - and they both have very good, personal reasons to wish him dead. Within hours he does die, although the operation itself was a complete success, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn must find out why...

My Take

This is #3 in Ngaio Marsh's titles, and the dust cover says that it continues to be one of her most popular novels, and has outstripped all of her other novels in sales.

First published in 1935, it is the pre-cursor to those Robin Cook-style medical murder mysteries. I didn't think there was anything dated about the writing or the plot.

The setting is mainly the operating theatre of a small hospital (not the narrow meaning that nursing home has come to mean today).

Roderick Alleyn has two sounding boards for his theories - his assistant Inspector Fox, and his journalist friend Nigel Bathgate.

The victim is the Home Secretary sufferring from appendicitis and perotonitis, who collapses in Parliament when introducing a controversial Bill related to terrorists and anarchists. (this will have a familiar ring for modern readers although set nearly 80years ago). The appendix is removed successfully but the patient never comes around after the operation. When an autopsy reveals that Derek O'Callaghan has been poisoned, the plot revolves around whether his murder is related to the opponents of his Bill, personal problems relating to an affair, or even side effects of pain relief administered by his doting sister.  The plot keeps the reader guessing right until the end.

My rating: 4.3

Very readable.

I've also reviewed
A MAN LAY DEAD
TIED UP IN TINSEL
4.3, DIED IN THE WOOL

Forgotten Book: SPINSTERS IN JEOPARDY, Ngaio Marsh

This week and next, Friday's Forgotten Books is being hosted by Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom.

Like most of my featured forgotten books this year, today's book comes from my list of books read in1992.

Synopsis (Amazon)

High in mountains stands the magnificent Saracen fortress, home of the mysterious Mr Oberon, leader of a coven of witches. It is not the historic castle, however, that intrigues Roderick Alleyn, on holiday with his family, but the suspicion that a huge drugs ring operates from within its ancient portals. But before the holiday is over, someone else has stumbled upon the secret. And Mr Oberon decides his strange and terrible rituals require a human sacrifice.


SPINSTERS IN JEOPARDY was Marsh's 17th Roderick Alleyn novel, published in 1954 and then as The Bride of Death in the United States in 1955.

Marsh (1895-1982) published another 15 titles before her death, making a total of 32 Roderick Alleyn titles in all. See Wikipedia for a list.

These days Dame Ngaio Marsh is remembered through the Ngaio Marsh awards, given to acknowledge the best in New Zealand crime fiction.
This year's winner was Neil Cross with LUTHER: THE CALLING.
(you may know of the stories from the BBC TV series)

See Crime Watch blog post: Have you read Ngaio Marsh?

Review: TIED UP IN TINSEL, Ngaio Marsh

Originally published 1972
Harper Collins Publishers, Fontana (1994)
ISBN 0-00-615832-3
224 pages

Every member of the staff at Halberds, but one, is a convicted murderer. Troy Alleyn, wife of DI Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, is spending Christmas there, her husband out of the country. She is painting the portrait of Hilary Bill-Tasman, the rather eccentric and enormously wealth landed proprietor of Halberds Manor.

The other members of the Halberds Christmas houseparty, Hilary's Aunt Bed and Uncle Flea, his uncle Bert, and his fiance Cressida Tottenham, round out a rather unusual cast of characters.

Bill-Tasman has organised an elaborate Christmas Day treat for local children in which an ancient bewhiskered and bearded Druid arrives towing a sledge of presents. But after the event the Druid can't be found, and other pranks seem designed to cast the blame for his disappearance on the murderous staff.
Enter Roderick Alleyn just returned from Australia.

TIED UP IN TINSEL was among the last of Dame Ngaio Marsh's (1895-1982) mysteries, although she continued to publish another 5 titles, right up to her death. It reflects not only her gift for clever plotting but also has a very theatrical feel to it. Characteristically an early page displays a very useful cast of characters, and the whole story feels as if it could easily be dramatised. There are lots of places that have the reader grasping at straws in an attempt to solve the murder before Alleyn does. I must confess that the "how" was easier to deduce than the "why".

I had intended to use this title as my "New Zealand" offering in the 2010 Global Reading Challenge but have decided not to since TIED UP IN TINSEL is set entirely at an English manor. It is really a variant of a locked room mystery since for much of the time the characters are confined to the manor either by events or by the weather.

TIED UP IN TINSEL proves that even as she approached her 80s New Zealand's Dame Nagaio Marsh had not lost her ability to write a good yarn.

My rating 4.5

If you are in New Zealand, or visiting there, you might like to visit Dame Ngaio Marsh's home in Christchurch on the South Island.

At the end of last year author Vanda Symon reviewed TIED UP IN TINSEL for our Christmas reading. Her eye for description is delightful.

Forgotten Book? BLACK AS HE'S PAINTED, Ngaio Marsh

This week's contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books.

According to my records, I read this on Australia Day (26th January) in 1977.

For those not familiar with her, Dame Ngaio Marsh (1895-1982) was a New Zealand crime fiction writer who has been compared with the greats: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. During her celebrated fifty-year career, Marsh was made a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, named Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, won numerous prestigious awards and penned 32 mystery novels.

Current New Zealand writer Vanda Symon has thrown down a challenge to read Ngaio Marsh's books in order - rather similar to my own Agatha Christie Reading Challenge.

Therein lies the problem. While my local library still has a couple of copies of BLACK AS HE'S PAINTED on their shelves, just recently, when oz_mystery_readers chose another Marsh title, TIED UP IN TINSEL, as its "Christmas read", we unfortunately found that copies were not readily available. Our libraries had ditched them. We probably could have got them at a used book store, and Amazon lists all 32 books and says they are available second hand at remarkably low prices.

So friends, here's an author for you to hunt down. If you enjoy the classic cozies, then you will likely enjoy one of these. They still hold up well for modern readers, as you can see from my two mini-reviews below.

A MAN LAY DEAD (1934), my rating 4.3.
This is Ngaio Marsh's debut novel, a classic country house party murder mystery, where the reader is tempted to map the location of all of the characters at the location of the murder. Nigel Bathgate, with his cousin Charles Rankin, is attending his first houseparty at Frampton. He has heard these houseparties hosted by Sir Hubert Handesley are both "original" and unpretentious. There will seven or eight guests, and, upon arrival, he learns that the main event will be a Murder. Sir Hubert has his own rules for the Murder Game, and eventually a murder there is, but not the theatrically staged one they have anticipated.
This is not Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn's first murder case, although it is Ngaio Marsh's first novel. Alleyn is already a seasoned detective, with a reputation for thorough and careful sleuthing. His reputation precedes him. He arrives at Frampton from Scotland Yard the morning after the murder. The body has already been moved, and the local constabulary and the police doctor are already in attendance.
In essence what Marsh does in this first novel is establish some of the characteristics which will become Alleyn's "signature" in subsequent novels.

COLOUR SCHEME (1943), my rating 4.2.
Believed by some to be her best novel, this classic by Ngaio Marsh is set in New Zealand during World War 2. Someone is assisting Germans to sink British ships off the coast of New Zealand and flashing lights on a nearby mountain are thought to be an enemy agent signalling a German boat or submarine. The setting is a run-down spa with boiling mud pools in the North Island near a Maori pa. This is an almost theatrical novel. Marsh makes extensive use of her knowledge of Maori customs and of course there is a murder, a victim lured into a boiling pool. Enter Roderick Alleyn on loan to the NZ government, searching for enemy agents.

What about you - have you read any Ngaio Marsh? If so, which is your favourite title? If not, will you look for some?

Forgotten Books: a Christmas triptych

This week's contribution to Pattinase's Friday's Forgotten Books.

I have a clutch of forgotten books for this week.
The last week of September reminds me that Christmas is only 3 months away, so why not hunt these Golden Age titles down? (What a lovely Christmas present for someone!)

First of all MAIGRET'S CHRISTMAS by George Simenon (1951)

Synopsis from Amazon:
Nine short stories make up this delightful holiday-themed collection, each featuring Georges Simenon's famous
detective, Jules Maigret. Christmas mysteries abound: an otherwise sensible little girl insists that she has seen Father Christmas, a statement alarming to her neighbors, Monsieur and Madame Maigret. Then, a choirboy helps the inspector solve a crime while he lies in bed with a cold; another boy, pursued by a criminal, ingeniously leaves a trail to help Maigret track him. Many of these stories feature observant and resourceful children, frightened yet resolute, who bring out a paternal streak in the childless Maigret. The rapport between the inspector and these youthful heroes imparts a delightful freshness to this holiday collection-
a cornucopia for fans of Maigret and mysteries.
If you'd like to read a few pages go here.

Then TIED UP IN TINSEL, Ngaio Marsh (1972)

Christmas time in an isolated country house and, following a flaming row in the kitchen, there's murder inside. When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected -- and foul play it proves to be.
Only suspicion falls not on the staff but on the guests, all so unimpeachably respectable that the very thought of murder in connection with any of them seems almost heresy. When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn returns unexpectedly from a trip to Australia, it is to find his beloved wife in the thick of an intriguing mystery...

Once again you can read a few pages - just click on the image.

Then there is HERCULE POIROT'S CHRISTMAS, Agatha Christie (1938)

It is Christmas Eve. The Lee family reunion is shattered by a deafening crash of furniture, followed by a high-pitched wailing scream. Upstairs, the tyrannical Simeon Lee lies dead in a pool of blood, his throat slashed. But when Hercule Poirot, who is staying in the village with a friend for Christmas, offers to assist, he finds an atmosphere not of mourning but of mutual suspicion. It seems everyone had their own reason to hate the old man.

What is your favourite Christmas novel?