Dame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895 and died in February 1982. She wrote over 30 detective novels and many of her stories have theatrical settings, for Ngaio Marsh’s real passion was the theatre. She was both actress and producer and almost single-handedly revived the New Zealand public’s interest in the theatre. It was for this work that she received what she called her ‘damery’ in 1966.

‘The brilliant Ngaio Marsh ranks with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers’Times Literary Supplement‘On the plane of art.’Tatler‘Nobody in her racket begins to touch her for writing grace and few possess her skill at creating potential corpses and suspects, building a puzzle and other essentials of grand and lofty detection. There hasn’t been anyone like her since the palmiest days of Dorothy L. Sayers.’New York Herald Tribune‘She is astoundingly good.’Daily Express‘The finest writer in the English languange of the pure, classical puzzle whodunnit. Among the crime queens, Ngaio Marsh stands out as an Empress.’The Sun