skygiants | (no subject)

I'm still reading Inspector Alleyn books! Over the past year I read five, and then one more this past week, so it seemed a reasonable time for a pause to write them up. I still have many of the same qualms about these books that I've had since the beginning -- there's a kind of fundamental people-compassion that I often, unfortunately, walk away feeling a bit like Marsh lacks -- but there were a few in this bunch that I genuinely enjoyed!

So, in addition to previous Alleyns, I have now read:

Overture to Death, a good old-fashioned small-town murder mystery featuring an incredible sweet elderly parson who's unfortunately irresistible to his romantically inclined parishioners and a murder via exploding piano. This was the first one I read in 2019 and I finished it thinking "ah yes, THIS nonsense is what I want out of my 1930s murder mysteries! more exploding pianos please!

Death at the Bar, which I thought was going to be about lawyers but turned out to instead involve a literal bar and an ingenious murder via dartboard; despite the cleverness of the murder method I did not end up much liking this one, which not only had a snide attitude towards young radicals but bait-and-switched me into thinking it might be uncharacteristically sympathetic towards the plight of ex-convicts and then turned out to be instead the very reverse.

A Surfeit of Lampreys, which feels like Marsh really wanted to write a charmingly bittersweet comedy of manners about an affectionately dysfunctional family that has just realized their carefree way of life is unsustainable, and then remembered that murder mysteries are what they pay her for and belatedly added in a murder plot for everyone to be stressed about. I enjoyed her charmingly bittersweet comedy of manners though! I would happily have read more of them! It's amazing how much more fun Marsh is when she really does want you to like most of the people involved.

Death and the Dancing Footmman, which is not a book in which Ngaio Marsh wants you to like most of the characters, but which I really enjoyed regardless. A bored artist plans a dinner party as a kind of performance art for his own entertainment in which all of the guests have dramatic beef of some sort or another with at least one of the other guests; he is shocked! and appalled!! when this results in MURDER!!! On the one hand I completely mis-guessed the murderer but on the other hand the mystery prominently featured an old-timey radio, which is my jam, so on the cowhole I pronounce myself satisfied.

Colour Blind, in which Ngaio Marsh is, I believe, really, genuinely trying not to be racist about Maori people, and yet. Anyway, there's a weird family that runs a mud bath spa near a Maori village, and a murder at the mud bath spa, and a pretentious Shakespearean actor and his long-suffering secretary; I did like the long-suffering secretary. Also this one is during the war and instead of solving mysteries full-time Alleyn is fighting espionage in New Zealand and just solving mysteries when they happen to overlap with the espionage, which it turns out is surprisingly often.

Died in the Wool, in which Ngaio Marsh is not at ALL attempting not to be horribly racist about Japanese people; not a major part of the plot but worth noting all the same for sheer virulence. This one's about the possibly-spying-related death of an officious New Zealand MP, and at first I had strong concerns that we would be treated to a caricaturish moral about female politicans and how they neglect their poor long-suffering husbands, but in fact the posthumous portrait of the victim turned out more interesting and complicated than I feared -- not positive, per se, but nuanced. So, in retrospect, I quite liked it aside from the racism. Which is of course a fairly large aside. I do in fact quite like Marsh when she gets nuanced, it's just I find it hard to trust her in advance.

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From:

sovay

and a murder via exploding piano.

I'm starting to think that everything is better with pianos, whatever the pianos are doing. Hausu (1977) has a piano that eats people. Tanith Lee's "The Isle Is Full of Noises" has a vampire piano. And now Overture to Death has a piano that explodes. Okay, maybe everything is better with pianos when the pianos are improbably violent, but you see what I'm getting at.

From:

sheliak

Now I'm thinking of that one rent protest song, "Hey Ho, Cook and Rowe!"

(I don't think that piano was really doing anything except serving as a barrier, but the line always gets my attention.)

Hey, ho, tell them no
With a barb-wire fence and a piano,
Took a thousand cops to make them go,
Three cheers for Cook and Rowe!

From:

sovay

With a barb-wire fence and a piano

I'll take it!

From:

skygiants

I think it's just something about how much the keys do resemble teeth; you see a murderous piano and you're like, 'someone really DID understand the essence of that instrument' and it's very satisfying.

From:

sovay

I think it's just something about how much the keys do resemble teeth

Tanith Lee leans on that even in stories that aren't the one about the vampire piano. I did too, actually, in an early story with violence and a piano (and a murder ballad). Huh.

From:

oracne

I have read a ton of Marsh, but then I culled most of them last year because I could no longer bear the racism and classism. I did keep the ones with Agatha Troy for a possible re-read, though I think even those have some of the same issues.

Her best ones, I feel, are the ones full of theater folks, because she knows that world and you can really tell.

From:

skygiants

So far Agatha Troy has only actually showed up in the one of the books where she's introduced and the rest of the time she's offstage, acknowledged only whenever someone passes an offhand comment about her painting and Alleyn is like "MY WIFE!" I'm curious to see when she'll show up again! (But once I read through the series I doubt I will ever reread.)

From:

hilarita

If you're reading in order, then there is some truly horrifying racist shit in some of the later ones about black Africans (from a made-up country). So horrifying that I spotted this when reading as a white teen in the early 90s - not that I named it as explicitly racist then, just "WTF?" I get the impression that she's trying not to be racist at certain points, but is just failing spectacularly.

They're well-written examples of the genre, but they really do expose just how racist and classist and homophobic and disablist the white middle classes were at the time.

From:

skygiants

I AM reading in order so this is very good to be forewarned of. 😬

There are definitely times in the books when I look at an unfortunately racist passage or portrayal and I'm like, "I think you genuinely are trying not to be a dick here so I'll give you a little credit for that," and then there are other times when I read a passage and it just oozes complete undisguised, unconsidered contempt.

From:

hilarita

I've remembered a particularly egregious one - Black as He's Painted, which, the title is fair warning. It's like sort of OK, and it would remain OK but for two pages of gratuitously racist WTF-ery right near the end.

From:

evelyn_b

I love Marsh, and I think she genuinely tries to be non-racist a lot of the time, even in the book about Alleyn's African schoolmate-turned-head of state, where she mostly doesn't succeed. Sometimes she doesn't try at all, though. Most of her best books are the ones like Lampreys where she's just having a grand time describing some characters and then oh no, not murder again. :(((

I seem to remember thinking Overture to Death was a little nastier toward its victim than I prefer, but it does have an excellent murder method. Marsh in general can be counted on for largely sensible detection in the face of the most ridiculously complicated murders.

Died in the Wool was the first Marsh I read, and I was completely sold on her as an author based on the combination of nuance + gruesome complicated murder method + pun in the title.

From:

osprey_archer

Died in the Wool was my first Marsh too! I feel like we should fistbump or something. It remains one of my favorites, because I did go into it braced for the female MP to be a horrible caricature, and then instead we do get this surprisingly complex and nuanced portrait of a complicated woman. I particularly loved the way that it starts with Alleyn interviewing the main suspects, who all have such different points of view on the victim - and reveal a lot about themselves in the process, too.

From:

evelyn_b

*fistbump*

A good post-mortem Alleyn interview really is a thing of beauty.

From:

skygiants

It is quite interesting to me when she does and doesn't try - I think she generally is trying with the Maori characters, for example, and also with Jews, and then there's unexamined bad assumptions like in the eugenics book, and then a few examples like the gay choir boys in Death in Ecstasy and the Japanese character in this book where it's clear she feels no need to even bother trying to be fair-minded about her disgust.

Overture to Death was definitely pretty nasty to its victim (and its murderer), though the distress of the vicar and the sheer entertainment factor of the EXPLODING PIANO meant that I didn't mind it as much as I might have otherwise!

From:

evelyn_b

Definitely! And I feel like Alleyn as a character is written to be, not totally without his prejudices, but someone who's supposed to be a notably measured, rational, and fair-minded guy, which makes some of the unexamined or outright nasty bits stand out more - or maybe that's just me.

(This is all making me want to re-read Marsh, though I don't know if I'd have the stamina yet. I expect my favorites and unfavorites will be a little different the second time around).

From:

osprey_archer

A Surfeit of Lampreys is one of my favorite Marsh books, although it's a bittersweet kind of favorite because it makes me think about What Might Have Been in Marsh had just decided to toss the murder mystery format aside and write novels about charmingly dysfunctional families of hapless aristocrats.

Possibly she found the difficulties of plotting a novel without a murder insurmountable? It's true that it might be difficult to plot a whole murder-free book about the Lampreys. How does a novel even end if you don't have a detective wrap up the book by solving the case?

From:

skygiants

I think it's my favorite of the ones I've read so far! It reminded me a bit of one of my favorite weird Joan Aiken novels, Morningquest, which ... now that I come to think about it does feature attempted murder, along with baby theft and incest and telepathy and drug smuggling, but really the only A-plot is the shifts in the way that the protagonist as an Adopted Outsider comes to understand her relationship to this family. And really that's the A-plot of Surfeit of Lampreys as well!

From:

thistleingrey

I could not finish Died in the Wool, for whichever reason, so I am glad to know about the posthumous portrait!

From:

skygiants

There are LOTS of good reasons not to finish Died in the Wool, among them the unmitigated racism that leaps out at the unsuspecting reader in the very first chapter!

From:

thistleingrey

Heh, true. I've paused definitely midway (60%ish?), and somehow it's not for me. I want to try another Marsh sometime; it's my first and only, so far.

From:

fitzcamel

Belated drive-by: as someone who generally shares many of your reactions to Marsh, the one that's worked best for me so far is Opening Night/Night at the Vulcan. Not unproblematic, but the theatrical side of it works very well, and the (outsider) protagonist is very appealing.