en-US Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:58:39 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Review7280881609 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:58:39 -0700 /review/show/7280881609 Joel gave 3 stars to Dead Water (Roderick Alleyn, #23) by Ngaio Marsh
Hand in Glove made me feel like I needed to take a bit of a Marsh hiatus as there were too many recurring themes in her novels. Alas, this latest effort does nothing to assuage that concern.

Once again, Marsh contrives to get Alleyn on location in the village where the murder will occur, and as always the local constabulary "don't have the staff" to deal with the case themselves. We have the obligatory Sympathetic Young Couple whose story progresses in the same way it always does. Marsh's usual vitriol for "elderly (read: 40 or older) spinsters" - which I always find bizarre since she herself fit this description for half her life - is cranked up to ridiculous levels here, serving to explain away all manner of unhinged behaviour on the part of the victim. Predictably, most of the locals are portrayed as unsophisticated bumpkins.

There are also a few more familiar types like the pompous ex-military man, the snippy village doctor, the diffident rector... Really, Marsh could write these people in her sleep at this point. Pretty much the only character of interest is Alleyn's former French instructor, an 83-year-old firecracker who inherits the island on which the village is situated, and whose involvement is the pretext for Alleyn to turn up. (Amusingly, while she escapes Marsh's usual spinster treatment, she also has to literally identify herself as an exception to the almost inviolable rule.)

At this stage in her career, Marsh wasn't getting bogged down quite as much in lengthy, repetitive interviews and alibi logic puzzles, so the action moves along briskly enough once the investigation begins in earnest, and even ends in a rare Alleyn chase scene! It did start to feel like a soap opera at a certain point with the amount of drama that's uncovered towards the end. Not for the first time, Marsh doesn't create a very wide field of credible suspects, so the likely culprit becomes fairly obvious before you even learn the motive. Additionally, said motive made a lot of the previous subplots [spoilers removed] seem like unnecessary padding, as it didn't really require any feats of investigative genius and could have been uncovered at any time.

Despite my gripes, I enjoy Marsh well enough and her sardonic humour is right up my alley. I just feel she lacks the variety and ingenuity of someone like Christie, and it starts to stick out when you consume her novels in quick succession. ]]> Review7229125753 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:55:14 -0700 /review/show/7229125753 Joel gave 2 stars to Death of a Fool (Roderick Alleyn, #19) by Ngaio Marsh
As always, you can count on Marsh not to bore you with a run-of-the-mill murder. This one occurs during the performance of an ancient folkloric ritual in a small village in Southeast England, where a mock decapitation turns out to be the real thing.

Alas, this novel also runs the gamut of issues that tend to plague what I consider the weaker Marsh mysteries. For starters, the murder is too convoluted and difficult to visualise, especially when the intricacies of the ritual - the dances, the elaborate costumes, the positioning and movements of the performers, etc. - are so crucial to following what's going on. Naturally, this also leaves us bogged down in the alibi logic puzzles Marsh loves so much, culminating in a reenactment of the scene which I found equally impenetrable even when the solution was revealed.

Another frequent source of annoyance in Marsh novels is the use of silly delaying tactics to pad out investigations. One character repeatedly gets shouted down by all and sundry while on the point of revealing something Really Important. We get several scenes of Alleyn advancing a theory to his colleagues, and we see their surprised reactions - but not the theory itself. It's par for the course in this genre to give the reader an obscure clue while the detective withholds the clever piece of reasoning that explains it, but withholding the clues altogether through these contrivances is just tiresome.

The other problem I encounter with Marsh is that she doesn't always do the greatest job of making most of the "suspects" credible. Between the mechanics of the crime, and the fact that there are certain categories of people who pretty much never end up as the culprit, you can generally narrow the field down very quickly, as is the case here (hence the aforementioned delaying tactics).

Last but not least, these romances between "young lovers" (is that what we're calling a 30-year-old man courting an 18-year-old girl?) tend to be tedious in the extreme. At one point this man actually utters the following words to the object of his affections: "How frightfully, frightfully nice of you to love me." Please, make it stop. (Then again, there was similar tomfoolery when Alleyn was courting Troy, so maybe it's just Marsh romances in general I can't abide.) ]]> Review7128432050 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:51:02 -0700 /review/show/7128432050 Joel gave 3 stars to Swing, Brother, Swing (Mass Market Paperback) by Ngaio Marsh
Sort of a by-the-numbers Marsh here, with yet another aristocratic family at the centre of the plot. This time, at least, the eccentricities are confined to one member, Lord Pastern & Bagott, who has spent his life hopping between completely unrelated fads and obsessions, and dragging his family along for the ride. On the heels of a walking collection of obnoxious gay stereotypes in the previous novel, we now have a walking collection of obnoxious Latin stereotypes who becomes the target of everyone's ire.

Lord Pastern's latest "imbecility", as his French wife Cécile would put it, is playing in a swing band, and his debut performance is the setting for the usual improbable Marsh murder. In all honesty, I felt like the culprit's behaviour before, during, and after the crime kind of telegraphed the solution, even without the full details which would have provided the motive. It made the standard barrage of red herrings and absurd coincidences fall a bit flat in the end; most of the evidence that mattered was pointing to one person, so following all these digressions only to end up back where I started was a bit disappointing. Apart from Lord Pastern and the simpering band composer Breezy Bellairs, I didn't find the characters quite as unlikeable as it appears some other reviewers did, but none of them were particularly worth spending a great deal of time with either.

This is where Marsh sometimes isn't the strongest: between the characterisation and the evidence, she doesn't necessarily create a very wide field of credible suspects. On the one hand, that is more "realistic" (a sentiment Marsh has actually had Alleyn and Fox express in more than one novel); on the other, this is a Golden Age Mystery�, and you can only champion "realism" so stridently when you create the kinds of elaborate murders and melodramatic characters that Marsh does. ]]> Review7067396834 Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:42:52 -0700 /review/show/7067396834 Joel gave 3 stars to Death and the Dancing Footman (Roderick Alleyn, #11) by Ngaio Marsh
This might be the most "Golden Age Mystery�" scenario imaginable: bored millionaire Jonathan Royal plans a house party where each of the guests (with the exception of Aubrey Mandrake, our primary third person POV and a friend of the host) has long-established emnity with at least one of the others. Naturally, Royal ensures the warring factions are all unaware that their nemeses will be at the party, and waits for the fireworks to go off as the guests remain trapped in his mansion with a snowstorm raging outside.

As usual, Marsh spends the first half or so of the novel introducing us to the various characters and having them interact with each other, before Alleyn eventually turns up to unravel the mystery in roughly five minutes. Some of the characters are rather two-dimensional, and the level of interconnectivity between them is completely preposterous, but that's what you sign up for with a premise like this one. Subsequent events ratchet up the tension even further, although they also point pretty clearly towards the most likely suspect if you're familiar with this genre.

For me, where things fall a bit flat is when the murder itself happens. I'm already not a fan of Marsh's penchant for what I call "alibi logic puzzles", where Alleyn and Co. crack the case primarily by repeatedly going over people's recollections of their movements leading up to the fateful event. Here the guests are trapped by the blizzard and can't contact the police immediately, so they first spend a good chunk of the narrative doing the alibi dance themselves, and then once they're able to reach Alleyn in a nearby town, he proceeds to go over the whole thing with them again. The incident of the titular "dancing footman", mildly amusing though it is, mainly serves as another variable in the logic puzzle.

This is probably where the "unofficial detectives" like Poirot or Marple have an advantage from a storytelling standpoint. While it probably wouldn't be admissible as evidence, it is more entertaining to watch a trained observer use the personalities of the suspects as a major component in solving the crime than to follow endless recapitulations of who went into what room, for how long, and through which door. The best Marsh novels are the ones where she balances both elements, but in this instance Alleyn is able to work it out almost immediately based largely on the latter, and of course the "civilians" aren't able to provide much useful insight until he arrives on the scene.

Between the country house setting, the improbable connections between characters, the melodramatic dialogue, and the Rube Goldberg murder plot, so much of the novel is so hilariously stereotypical of the genre that I couldn't help having a good time in spite of myself. I would have enjoyed it even more had Alleyn appeared earlier and spent some time with the suspects rather than abruptly working his magic towards the end. ]]> Review7208129065 Mon, 21 Apr 2025 15:42:03 -0700 /review/show/7208129065 Joel gave 3 stars to Scales of Justice (Roderick Alleyn, #18) by Ngaio Marsh
After the unremitting lunacy of Spinsters in Jeopardy, we're back on familiar ground with a murder mystery in the rural English village of Swevenings. The aristocracy are once again prominent, with the crime tying together several families who have been fixtures in the community for generations.

I found this novel frustrating for a few reasons. Firstly - and I'll keep this one vague as it's hard to expand on without major spoilers - it at times sets itself up to be a scathing critique of English classism and snobbishness, but at others appears unwilling to go all the way, culminating in an ending that undermines much of the previous messaging. (That the motive is also wholly unconvincing makes the resolution that much more unsatisfying.)

Secondly, Marsh is at her infuriating worst in terms of artificially withholding information from the reader to prevent the crime from being solved too quickly. One subplot involving a long-buried family secret is dragged out interminably because everyone involved refuses to tell Alleyn about it, trotting out the usual "it has nothing whatsoever to do with this business, trust me bro" nonsense. (Even the one person who could theoretically benefit from its revelation remains intractable, providing a rather flimsy explanation when Alleyn inevitably finds out anyway.) Meanwhile, Alleyn is constantly putting forth theories to Fox and his other colleagues that we are never privy to, an annoying Marsh quirk that is particularly ubiquitous here.

Finally, this is one of those cases where Marsh makes the mechanics of the murder needlessly complicated, tied up as it is in descriptions of the village's geography which are difficult and tedious to follow. We even have a digression into the minutiae of trout scales (hence the title) which turns out to be hardly worth the amount of time that was devoted to it. Honestly, this pretty much sums up the novel as a whole: it seems to promise a great deal at the outset, but your reward for the time invested feels like a bit of a letdown in the end. ]]> Review7476990701 Wed, 09 Apr 2025 21:53:55 -0700 /review/show/7476990701 Joel gave 2 stars to Last Ditch (Roderick Alleyn, #29) by Ngaio Marsh
Ricky Alleyn, son of Roderick Alleyn and Agatha Troy Alleyn, has an odd place in the Marsh canon. He first appears as an impossibly precocious six-year-old who gets kidnapped in the dreadful Spinsters in Jeopardy, then practically vanishes without trace until Last Ditch, published over two decades later. Now a 21-year-old university don, he's taking a break in the Channel Islands working on a novel when he gets himself roped into further criminal hijinks.

Although this latest installment (mercifully) isn't as chaotic as Ricky's debut, there is at least one major similarity: lamentably, this is yet another late-career Marsh in which drug smugglers and users prominently feature. We spend most of the novel's first half following Ricky, who is just as bland and anodyne as his father, but without nearly the same razor-sharp intelligence; he stumbles and bumbles from one crisis to another, showing all the situational awareness of a newborn babe. Another tiresome Marsh trope soon resurfaces in the shape of the Pharamonds, the sort of scatty well-to-do family that crops up every so often in these novels. (There's a slightly odd subplot of Ricky becoming infatuated with the scattiest of them all, Julia, who is happily married and appears at least twice his age. I found her too silly to believe she would inspire that kind of reaction, but I guess these things aren't an exact science.)

Between the drug element and the suspicious death of a young woman in a horse-riding accident, Papa Alleyn is eventually compelled to take the matter in hand, aided as always by Inspector Fox. Alas, neither case is particularly entertaining to follow. The murder and subsequent investigation feel strangely subdued [spoilers removed], and in any case both are sidelined for long stretches in favour of Ricky's Big Adventure with the incompetent drug-runners. Imbuing Ricky with a more distinct personality would definitely have helped matters, given how much of the action he has to carry, but either way the whole thing is a bit too disjointed and derivative. ]]> Review7094232780 Sun, 06 Apr 2025 21:19:14 -0700 /review/show/7094232780 Joel gave 3 stars to Died in the Wool (Roderick Alleyn, #13) by Ngaio Marsh
These novels tend to follow a similar general pattern: we begin by spending several chapters getting to know the eventual murder victim and the people around them (with or without Alleyn being present), then the deed is done and Alleyn enters the picture to do his usual "routine". Marsh changes tack here, as we have one scene with Florence "Flossie" Rubrick before she turns up packed into a bale of wool on her sheep farm (Marsh does not do normal murders). We then wait a further 15 months for Alleyn to turn up, ostensibly as part of a counter-espionage investigation (this is another story set during World War II, and the farm, rather improbably, is also the site for the development of a top secret military weapon).

The upshot of this approach is that we get even more dialogue than usual; not only does Alleyn have to obtain accounts of the events leading up to the murder, but we also have several people providing their own perspectives on Flossie's character. It does feel at times like a bridge too far in terms of the amount of information we have to absorb from second-hand accounts, especially with many of the younger characters being prone to silly melodramatic outbursts and prevarications that cause conversations to drag on forever. Given the nature of the crime and the field of suspects, you probably only need to grasp a few key strands from the endless parade of interviews to have a good idea of who the culprit is. Things do at least improve in the latter half as the interrogations become less meandering and the action picks up. Ultimately, I don't think Flossie Rubrick is a complex or compelling enough character to be the focus of this kind of novel, compared to someone like Amyas Crayle in Agatha Christie's Five Little Pigs, where this concept works a lot better for me. ]]> Review7145873393 Sun, 06 Apr 2025 21:15:22 -0700 /review/show/7145873393 Joel gave 3 stars to Opening Night (Paperback) by Ngaio Marsh
When Marsh returns to her theatrical roots as the setting for a novel, you have a pretty good idea of what to expect: colourful characters, lots of clashing egos and petty back-biting, and even more florid dialogue than usual. Opening Night introduces a unique element in the form of Martyn Tarne, a young, down-on-her-luck aspiring actress who rather implausibly stumbles her way into a job as a dresser at the Vulcan Theatre. Tarne is really too good for the world she's landed in, and her interactions with the other theatricals are the highlight of the pre-murder portion of the novel (especially when her not-exactly-guilty secret is revealed).

Alas, the arrival of Alleyn and Co. to investigate the inevitable homicide doesn't maintain this momentum as one might expect. The crime itself is so simple, and the evidence that convinces Alleyn it's a murder rather than a suicide so slight, that there doesn't seem to be much scope for a prolonged investigation. Many of the conversations seem padded out by the standard dramatic exclamations and interjections from some of the more, er, theatrical characters. Once a certain piece of information was revealed, I was immediately able to pinpoint both the murderer and the motive, which is hardly a feat I pull off with regularity. Alleyn artificially extends the denouement with his thoroughly ridiculous method of exposing the killer.

There's also a romance which I could very much have done without, even more so as it develops out of nowhere towards the end and has no bearing on the plot whatsoever. [spoilers removed] ]]> Review7208129065 Sun, 06 Apr 2025 21:09:11 -0700 /review/show/7208129065 Joel gave 3 stars to Scales of Justice (Roderick Alleyn, #18) by Ngaio Marsh
After the unremitting lunacy of Spinsters in Jeopardy, we're back on familiar ground with a murder mystery in the rural English village of Swevenings. The aristocracy are once again prominent, with the crime tying together several families who have been fixtures in the community for generations.

I found this novel frustrating for a few reasons. Firstly - and I'll keep this one vague as it's hard to expand on without major spoilers - it at times sets itself up to be a scathing critique of English classism and snobbishness, but at others appears unwilling to go all the way, culminating in an ending that undermines much of the previous messaging. (That the motive is also wholly unconvincing makes the resolution that much more unsatisfying.)

Secondly, Marsh is at her infuriating worst in terms of artificially withholding information from the reader to prevent the crime from being solved too quickly. One subplot involving a long-buried family secret is dragged out interminably because everyone involved refuses to tell Alleyn about it, trotting out the usual "it has nothing whatsoever to do with this business, trust me bro" nonsense. (Even the one person who could theoretically benefit from its revelation remains intractable, providing a rather flimsy explanation when Alleyn inevitably finds out anyway.) Meanwhile, Alleyn is constantly putting forth theories to Fox and his other colleagues that we are never privy to, an annoying Marsh quirk that is particularly ubiquitous here.

Finally, this is one of those cases where Marsh makes the mechanics of the murder needlessly complicated, tied up as it is in descriptions of the village's geography which are difficult and tedious to follow. We even have a digression into the minutiae of trout scales (hence the title) which turns out to be hardly worth the amount of time that was devoted to it. Honestly, this pretty much sums up the novel as a whole: it seems to promise a great deal at the outset, but your reward for the time invested feels like a bit of a letdown in the end. ]]> Review7448029577 Sun, 06 Apr 2025 20:45:29 -0700 /review/show/7448029577 Joel gave 2 stars to Photo Finish (Roderick Alleyn, #31) by Ngaio Marsh
Reading reviews of Marsh novels over the last few weeks has helped to solidify why I keep finding the experience so hit-or-miss: Marsh is decidedly better at the leadup to a murder compared to what happens afterward. While she does sometimes lean on certain "types", the ways she sketches out her characters and the interactions between them tend to be the most engaging part of the story. Once the crime occurs and Alleyn starts doing his stuff, the results can be unpredictable. Alleyn isn't always enough of a presence to carry the action, the investigations sometimes devolve into repetitive and tiresome interviews (although not as frequently in her later works), and certain standard mystery elements - in particular, the clues and the explanation of the motive - can feel a bit half-baked in some instances. This is why I don't necessarily have an issue with the murder happening relatively late in the novel; there's no guarantee that what follows will be all that enthralling.

Of course, you sometimes have cases where all of these pitfalls are present... in addition to the introductory portions also not being all that compelling either, which is how I felt about Photo Finish.

Marsh takes us back to her native land of New Zealand for the first time since World War II, as Alleyn and Troy are invited to the island estate of Montague Reece, intimate friend of famed operatic soprano Isabella Sommita. Troy has been asked to complete a portrait of "La Sommita", while Alleyn is ostensibly on location to help deal with a tabloid photographer who has been hounding the singer for years (in fact, he's looking into yet international another drug ring). Several high-profile guests are also on the island for the performance of an opera written expressly for La Sommita by her protégé and lover.

The temperamental, flamboyant La Sommita is pretty much the only character worth talking about here, which is far from ideal as I'm not a huge fan of that type of character. That said, the story becomes a bit of a slog once she is inevitably bumped off, although her role as the stereotypical melodramatic Italian woman is soon assumed by her maid Maria. A storm leaves a handful of guests stranded on the island overnight, and Alleyn is forced to take over the murder investigation until the New Zealand police are able to gain access. It's largely a tedious process, with a lot of protracted conversations that are hardly worth the amount of time spent on them. Even Troy is mostly forgettable, and is sidelined for large chunks of the novel in any case. The twist that accompanies the reveal of the murderer is clever enough, but then Marsh gives us yet another far from convincing motive. This one was simply a miss for me. ]]>