skygiants | (no subject)

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.

Threaded | Flat

NGAIO MARSH HELL YEAH. Alleyn will continue rounding up all the suspects for a murder recap at the end of nearly every book, always while explaining that this is not official policy. Well, if it gets the crimes solved, I guess!

There's a book near the end of the series that has some call-backs to The Nursing Home Murder; it's been a while since I've read it, but I recall it being sort of "Yeah, my bad on the eugenics thing," which I appreciated. Sometimes people do change! And sometimes it's fifty years before they write their mea culpa book, but still. Better later than never.

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.

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.

Edited (apologies for multiple edits) 2018-07-29 20:04 (UTC)

I love Marsh and I got into her with later books then went back and read the earlier ones, which are more her doing Christie. The Nursing Home Murder is one I almost never reread, she gets better though there are some odd points where she's progressive for her time and others where she's not.

I bought one of Marsh's books* from a charity shop some months ago but thus far it has just stayed on my bedside table unread. Hmmm.

*It was A Man Lay Dead.

Edited 2018-07-31 14:57 (UTC)

This is extremely random and six months late but there's a series I love, the Daisy Dalrymple books, and at one point she asks her detective boyfriend to go to the opera with her. It's a date. They're on a date. They're both SO ANNOYED when someone dies onstage and more annoyed when there's an attempted poisoning later in the same book when they're ON ANOTHER DATE.

Long story short I love those books.