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review 2020-05-20 20:13
A Man Lay Dead (Marsh)
A Man Lay Dead - Ngaio Marsh

I've left myself in the interesting position of trying to review, at a distance of several weeks, two country house mysteries, both of them the first in the author's series. The one in question here is the first Roderick Alleyn mystery; the other, "The Crime at Black Dudley" by Margery Allingham, the first Campion mystery. Although the two books are remarkably similar - both feature daggers, a game in the dark, and a mysterious and threatening foreigner, for instance - what stands out for me is how dissimilar Campion and Alleyn already are.

 

This is the more remarkable in that they both, like their brother Wimsey, are clearly descended from the same progenitor, the Scarlet Pimpernel. They are all aristocrats in disguise, whose deep and serious purposes are concealed by silliness. It is already clear from these first novels that while Campion's silliness is to be a thick and heavy cover, to the point where most of his acquaintance question his stability, Alleyn's forays into bad jokes and slightly unprofessional behaviour arise from deep unease within his real character, which finds the business of crime repugnant, and the business of crime detection occasionally disturbing and upsetting. It is my impression, based on reading subsequent novels (many of them in the far distant past) that while Campion's silly-fool cover is maintained, with only the occasional glimpse behind the curtain, Alleyn's silliness is almost entirely dropped, especially when he takes on the new character of lover. This is appropriate, given that he is, from the first, present in his professional capacity as a policeman, unlike Wimsey and Campion, who are freelance amateurs.

 

In this book, despite a well-developed - in fact, rather over-dramatically developed - sub-plot involving Russian conspirators and a little bit of torture for Alleyn' sidekick, Nigel Bathgate, the murder of Bathgate's cousin, Charles Rankin, turns out to have the oldest motive of all. I'll say no more than that, except that Alleyn stages a good reveal, involving, of all things, sliding down a banister (no, he does not compromise his own dignity!)

 

Based on the evidence of covers, Ngaio Marsh's mysteries appear to have been recently re-released, which may explain not only why they're all readily available on my e-library, but also why this one was so heavily wait-listed.

 

I enjoyed this very much.

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review 2020-05-16 19:44
A Man Lay Dead
A Man Lay Dead - Ngaio Marsh

Alleyn looked at him with a curious air of compassion.

‘Not even yet?’ he said.

‘Whose were the prints?’

‘That I am not going to tell you. Oh, believe me, Bathgate, not out of any desire to figure as the mysterious omnipotent detective. That would be impossibly vulgar. No. I am not telling you because there is still that bit of my brains that cannot quite accept the QED of the theorem.

Well, that was one of the silliest GA detective stories I have read. Not bad or horrible or totally off-putting, but entirely implausible. So, implausible that I even want to call it "cute".

 

So, when Alleyn stated (see quote above) that the QED had not been established, yet, I may have laughed out loud. I may also have laughed again at the end of the book.

 

I am glad I have read A Man Lay Dead after having already another of Marsh's books, because I already know that Marsh can write a splendid mystery. It's just that A Man Lay Dead is not it.

 

Now that this first book is out of the way, I look forward to the rest of the series, tho.

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review 2020-05-15 12:16
A Man Lay Dead
A Man Lay Dead - Ngaio Marsh

The first "Inspector Alleyn" mystery and I´m glad that this isn´t the first one I´ve read by Marsh. Because this book isn´t that good.

 

The plot is a simple one. During a house party a man dies and one of the house guests must be the murderer.

 

Enter Inspector Alleyn ... or someone, who is supposed to be him, because I didn´t get the impression that this Inspector is the same one as the one in "Scales of Justice". I really disliked Inspector Alleyn in his first outing. And I´m not alone. The majority of the characters in the book disliked him as well at some point or another.

 

The plot was meh and the whole modus operandi of the murder and how Alleyn figured it out didn´t make a whole lot of sense. And what was the purpose of this weird Russian brotherhood sub plot? 

 

I did like the atmosphere of Marsh´s writing, though, and the setting of a country house with a small group of suspects is one of my favorites.

 

But overall this book fell flat for me. Definitely not a favorite of mine when it comes to golden age mysteries.

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review SPOILER ALERT! 2020-04-23 06:25
The Nursing Home Murder (Marsh)
The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio Marsh

Since I was reading a biography of Ngaio Marsh, I decided to pick up a couple of her mysteries from the library to remind myself of their flavour. This one is only the third in the series, so Roderick Alleyn is still without a romantic partner, and still decidedly a smart-aleck.

 

The title of this work doesn't work particularly well in a contemporary North American context, because the meaning of the term "nursing home" is not the same. Here it means, essentially, a small private hospital. So one has to put aside the associations with vulnerable old people (especially vivid in the midst of this pandemic that is preying upon them) and realize instead that the murder victim is a man of power - the Home Secretary - with a multitude of enemies, personal and public, who might wish to see him dead. When he goes into that hospital with acute peritonitis, pretty much everyone around the operating table either has a fairly obvious motive (two members of a romantic triangle of which he is the third point, for instance; and a nurse who is a vocal member of the Communist ("Bolshie") political group he is actively attacking with legislation). In addition, he is dosed by his rather eccentric sister with a dubious cure, just before the operation. All of these suspects fairly successfully distract from the reasonable suspicion one might form, that a death due to an overdose of a secondary anaesthetic might just be attributed to the anaesthetist. The anaesthetist in the case seems at first to have no motive - unless you are paying close attention during Inspector Alleyn's interviews with all the characters.

 

One of the things I was delighted to rediscover is the wit in the narrative voice. Here, for instance, are Sir Derek's feelings towards his wife:

 

Always so perfectly groomed, so admirably gowned, so maddeningly remote. Their very embraces were masked in a chilly patina of good form. Occasionally he had the feeling that she rather disliked him, but as a rule he had no feeling about her at all. He supposed he had married her in a brief wave of enthusiasm for polar exploration. There were no children.

 

"Polar exploration"!

 

Finally, I'll note that even in this murder set in an operating theatre, the other kind of theatre (Ngaio Marsh's other great passion) is brought in to the story. It is presented as a possibly incriminating device - rather like the play in Hamlet, someone describes a play they've just seen where the circumstances are a close mirror to the real life murder, and we all watch the reactions of various people (particularly the surgeon himself) with interest.

 

After I finished this one, I could barely wait to get to the other Marsh I had on hold with the library; what a delight to revisit an author I enjoyed so much when I was younger.

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review 2020-04-17 00:20
Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh
Scales of Justice - Ngaio Marsh

This was an enjoyable read but I knocked it down a bit for a couple of reasons. I find the technique of continually deferring explanation to the reader until the end to be a bit tedious. It diminishes my enjoyment when I have to wait for the explanation of all of the detective's "aha!" moments until the very end. I mean, I start to forget about them. I was also a little disappointed with who the culprit turned out to be and how that fed into the societal expectations. It wasn't very satisfying.

 

Not sure if I'll participate in the next buddy read because, as you can see, even short books take me a while and I'm not sure I want to spend time on a western.

 

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