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Since it is far too soon to read my way through Sayers again, I've started working through Ngaio Marsh's multitudinous Inspector Alleyn books as my light 1930s mystery reading. I've now read the first three: A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer, and The Nursing Home Murder.
The first book is a very classic country home murder as told mostly from the POV of Nigel, a Bright Young Journalist with the misfortune of being the cousin of the murder victim and the good fortune of being one half of this book's designated Bright Young Couple. Inspector Alleyn pops in halfway through the book for Nigel to alternately admire and mistrust while he goes through the motions of suspecting a whole slew of people whom Nigel would prefer not be suspected.
In the first book Alleyn is a bit of an polite enigma; one sees more of him in the later books, although the second book is still mostly from the POV of Nigel as Bright Young Sidekick. He also kicks off the plot by asking Alleyn to see his friend's play with him; one of the actors promptly gets murdered onstage, which, honestly, everyone by this point should know better than to ask a detective to the theater with them because something of the sort is inevitably going to happen. Anyway. This one is all very full of Theater People Being Dramatically Theatrical, and Alleyn has a sort-of romance with a diva femme fatale, which plunged rapidly into more drama than I really expected of him at this early juncture.
The third book made me make a lot of unhappy faces, because the murder victim is a politician and one of the suspects is a eugenicist and it turns out I have some profound disagreements with Marsh and Alleyn on the subject of both politics AND eugenics. The book managed to pull itself out of the 'eugenics is totally fine!' nose-dive at the very end but it was much too close a call for comfort. I would not reread this one, although there is an entertaining middle sequence in which Nigel and his bright young girlfriend Angela cameo to try and assist Alleyn by going undercover at a Communist club and are extremely bad at it. I do appreciate how very far Alleyn is from being infallible.
Every book ends with all the suspects getting called in for a Dramatic Reconstruction of the murder, which always Alleyn apologizes for and explains is unusual practice despite it being the only way he ever solves anything. Two out of three feature Communism as a red herring. I am assuming the first trend will continue; we'll see about the second one. I did call the murderer well in advance on the first two, but the third one totally got me because Nigel was actually right about something when he made a guess midway through the book and I already never expect Nigel to be correct about anything, so well played on that misdirection, Ngaio Marsh.
The first book is a very classic country home murder as told mostly from the POV of Nigel, a Bright Young Journalist with the misfortune of being the cousin of the murder victim and the good fortune of being one half of this book's designated Bright Young Couple. Inspector Alleyn pops in halfway through the book for Nigel to alternately admire and mistrust while he goes through the motions of suspecting a whole slew of people whom Nigel would prefer not be suspected.
In the first book Alleyn is a bit of an polite enigma; one sees more of him in the later books, although the second book is still mostly from the POV of Nigel as Bright Young Sidekick. He also kicks off the plot by asking Alleyn to see his friend's play with him; one of the actors promptly gets murdered onstage, which, honestly, everyone by this point should know better than to ask a detective to the theater with them because something of the sort is inevitably going to happen. Anyway. This one is all very full of Theater People Being Dramatically Theatrical, and Alleyn has a sort-of romance with a diva femme fatale, which plunged rapidly into more drama than I really expected of him at this early juncture.
The third book made me make a lot of unhappy faces, because the murder victim is a politician and one of the suspects is a eugenicist and it turns out I have some profound disagreements with Marsh and Alleyn on the subject of both politics AND eugenics. The book managed to pull itself out of the 'eugenics is totally fine!' nose-dive at the very end but it was much too close a call for comfort. I would not reread this one, although there is an entertaining middle sequence in which Nigel and his bright young girlfriend Angela cameo to try and assist Alleyn by going undercover at a Communist club and are extremely bad at it. I do appreciate how very far Alleyn is from being infallible.
Every book ends with all the suspects getting called in for a Dramatic Reconstruction of the murder, which always Alleyn apologizes for and explains is unusual practice despite it being the only way he ever solves anything. Two out of three feature Communism as a red herring. I am assuming the first trend will continue; we'll see about the second one. I did call the murderer well in advance on the first two, but the third one totally got me because Nigel was actually right about something when he made a guess midway through the book and I already never expect Nigel to be correct about anything, so well played on that misdirection, Ngaio Marsh.
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Was Alleyn always intended to be the main character, just seen from the outside à la Holmes, or did he pull a Campion and edge out the supposed series protagonist after the first book?
The book managed to pull itself out of the 'eugenics is totally fine!' nose-dive at the very end but it was much too close a call for comfort. I would not reread this one
If you have not already read it—I think it's the fifth or sixth in the series—you may wish to proceed carefully with Vintage Murder (1937), in which a murder must be investigated while Alleyn is just trying to have a holiday; it's set in New Zealand and it's fine about its main Māori character until all of a sudden it's not. (I apologize for the link being in two parts; I was subject to LJ comment limits at the time.) It put me off reading or even re-reading Marsh for a while, because I wasn't sure if they were all going to be full of things like that and I had just missed them the last time through. I feel grateful in hindsight that I missed the one with eugenics.
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For ?two years I've been partway through Died in the Wool, which is okay but somehow not very motivating. It has a very yellow-peril "Japanese" businessman near the beginning; since I'm still mired in Alleyn's attempt to line up ducks, I don't know yet whether the businessman recurs.
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Like, in-text dubiously Japanese, or just unconvincingly Japanese to the reader?
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...Once I'm not in the middle of it, I could look for the name? It's in the first few pages, IIRC.
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And: THANK YOU FOR THE HEADS-UP. Ugh, Marsh. I complain about Sayers, and ... I mean, with rights I complain about Sayers, but then I read anything by any of the other 1930s greats and I remember all over again how mild Sayer's punches are in comparison.
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That's hilarious.
I am reminded of a post I read years ago, which turned out to have been written by Sarah Rees Brennan:
"For instance, I am really not sure that Sherlock Holmes is smarter than Watson. (I speak purely of the Arthur Conan Doyle stories here, in several adaptations Watson's obviously meant to be an amiable idiot.) Watson's a doctor, for one thing, which usually indicates a certain amount of smarts. Watson's more socially and emotionally intelligent, for certain. And Watson knows a lot of things Holmes doesn't, like 'The earth revolves around the sun, Sherlock,' and 'THAT COCAINE IS BAD FOR YOU, SHERLOCK.' Watson, being a nice, unsuspicious and not all that observant guy, is simply not as good at sleuthing as Sherlock. Which is fair enough, sleuthing is Sherlock's job. If the Holmes stories focused on a medical practise, Sherlock would be 'Watson's flatmate who occasionally shows up and is a smartass. Plus is on the coke.'"
I felt at the time, and still feel strongly, that I would absolutely read a series of medical stories starring John Watson with intermittent cameos from his smartass, occasionally helpful, generally high flatmate.
And: THANK YOU FOR THE HEADS-UP. Ugh, Marsh. I complain about Sayers, and ... I mean, with rights I complain about Sayers, but then I read anything by any of the other 1930s greats and I remember all over again how mild Sayer's punches are in comparison.
You're welcome! I'm sorry!
I do feel I get punched less by Margery Allingham, so long as I stay away from The Fashion in Shrouds.
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Isn't it? I kind of love it. I read A Man Lay Dead and assumed that Nigel was one more one-book viewpoint character, so I was very surprised to hear he recurred as a POV character in the next few!
Admittedly, the previous Inspector Alleyn books I've read have been a handful picked at random off my parents' bookshelves, so it's possible that he does recur more and I just managed to miss those ones. But he wasn't even mentioned, so I'd guess Marsh got bored with him.
Oof about the occasional punches, though. Thaaaat is good to know. And another thing I hadn't encountered in my random handful, although Night at the Vulcan (aka Opening Night, per Wikipedia) has some rather dated gender/romantic politics going on with some of the suspects.
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I read a few Margery Allinghams last year and enjoyed them but never got round to writing them up; however, I had to stop after Police at the Funeral, which revolves around THE SHAME AND THE SCANDAL of A MIXED-RACE RELATIVE, and have not yet gotten the fortitude to go on.
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Jeez, I didn't even remember that. And I remember the one with the guy leading a double life as a clown.
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I believe you. That must be Great-Aunt Caroline. I have legitimately no memory of this payoff at all. Bah.