Ngaio Marsh – författare

One of Ngaio Marsh’s most popular novels, this time featuring one of her best creations – Lucy Lockett, the crime-solving cat.When the exuberant president of Ng’ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old school mate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise.Consequently, on the night of the embassy’s reception the house and grounds are stiff with police. Nevertheless, an assassin does strike, and Alleyn finds he has no shortage of help, from Special Branch to a tribal court – and a small black cat named Lucy Lockett who out-detects them all…

Ngaio Marsh’s classic Christmas murder mystery in a special 50th anniversary edition.Christmas time in an isolated country house and, following a flaming row in the kitchen, there’s murder inside.When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected – and foul play it proves to be. Only suspicion falls not on the staff but on the guests, all so unimpeachably respectable that the very thought of murder in connection with any of them seems almost heresy.When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn returns unexpectedly from a trip to Australia, it is to find his beloved wife in the thick of an intriguing mystery…

Folkways turn fatal in a very old-fashioned English village, in this witty mystery filled with "ingenious" detective work (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).The village of South Mardian likes the old ways. The very old ways. This may be 1957, but South Mardian still features a blacksmith, a village idiot, and an elaborate fertility ritual performed at the winter solstice. There''s squabbling, of course, and worse—like when one of the ritual''s main players is found beheaded, everything north of his neck having been neatly lopped off by a ritual sword. Inspector Alleyn does have to contain a certain incredulous amusement at the village''s fetishistic embrace of the eighteenth century—he does not, for example, have a real passion for morris dancing—but he''ll try to keep a straight face long enough to find the killer and let South Mardian return to the warm embrace of pre-Industrial Britain."A peerless practitioner of the slightly surreal, English-village comedy-mystery." —Kirkus Reviews"The doyenne of traditional mystery writers." —The New York Times

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the fifth volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.DIED IN THE WOOLOne summer evening in 1942 Flossie Rubrick, MP, one of the most formidable women in New Zealand, goes to her husband's wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech – and disappears. Three weeks later she turns up at an auction – packed inside one of her own bales of wool and very, very dead…FINAL CURTAINJust as Agatha Troy, the world famous painter, completes her portrait of Sir Henry Ancred, the Grand Old Man of the stage, the old actor dies. The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in – in the person of Troy's long-absent husband, Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn…SWING, BROTHER, SWINGThe music rises to a climax: Lord Pastern aims his revolver and fires. The figure in the spotlight falls – and the coup-de-théatre has become murder… Has the eccentric peer let hatred of his future son-in-law go too far? Or will a tangle of jealousies and blackmail reveal to Inspector Alleyn an altogether different murderer?

A country house murder, artistic insight and the post-war reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh’s wittiest and most readable novel.Agatha Troy, world famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies.The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in – in the person of Troy’s long-absent husband, Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn…

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the sixth volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.OPENING NIGHTDreams of stardom lured Martyn Tarne from faraway New Zealand to a soul-destroying round of West End agents and managers in search of work. Now, driven by sheer necessity, she accepts the humble job of dresser to the Vulcan Theatre's leading lady. But the eagerly awaited opening night brings a strange turn of the wheel of fortune – and sudden unforeseen death…SPINSTERS IN JEOPARDYHigh in the mountains stands an historic Saracen fortress, home of the mysterious Mr Oberon, leader of a coven of witches. Roderick Alleyn, on holiday with his family, suspects that a huge drugs ring operates from within the castle. When someone else stumbles upon the secret, Mr Oberon decides his strange rituals require a human sacrifice…SCALES OF JUSTICEThe inhabitants of Swevenings are stirred only by a fierce competition to catch a monster trout known to dwell in their beautiful stream. Then one of their small community is found brutally murdered; beside him is the freshly killed trout. Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn's murder investigation seems to be much more interested in the fish…

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the eighth volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.HAND IN GLOVEThe April Fool's Day was a roaring success for all, it seemed – except for poor Mr Cartell who ended up in the ditch – for ever. Then there was the case of Mr Percival Pyke Period's letter of condolence, sent before the body was found – not to mention the family squabbles. It's all a puzzling crime for Superintendent Alleyn…DEAD WATERTimes are good in the Cornish village of Portcarrow, as hundreds flock to taste the healing waters of Pixie Falls. When Miss Emily Pride inherits this celebrated land, she wants to put an end to the villagers' exploitation of miracle cures, especially Miss Elspeth Costs's gift shop. But someone puts an end to Miss Cost, and Roderick Alleyn finds himself literally on the spot…DEATH AT THE DOLPHINThe bombed-out Dolphin Theatre is given to Peregrine Jay by a mysterious oil millionaire, who also gives him a glove that belonged to Shakespeare to display in the dockside theatre. But then a murder takes place, a boy is attacked, and the glove is stolen. Inspector Roderick Alleyn doesn't think oil and water are a good mix…

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the final volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.PHOTO-FINISHThe luxury mansion on New Zealand's Lake Waihoe is the ideal place for a world-famous soprano to rest after her triumphant tour. Among the other guests are Chief Superintendent Alleyn and his wife – but theirs is not a social visit. When tragedy strikes, and isolated by one of the lake's sudden storms, Alleyn faces one of his trickiest cases…LIGHT THICKENSPeregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of Macbeth, the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck. But one night the claymore swings and the dummy's head is more than real: murder behind the scene. Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience…BLACK BEECH AND HONEYDEWWith all the insight and style her readers came to expect of her, Ngaio Marsh's autobiography captures all the joys, fears and hopes of a spirited young woman growing up in Christchurch, and charts her theatre and writing careers both in New Zealand and the UK. This sanguine, unpretentious and revealing book has been acclaimed for telling her most distinguished mystery – who was Ngaio Marsh?

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 18 tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including uncollected stories by Ngaio Marsh and John Dickson Carr. The Golden Age of detective fiction had begun inauspiciously with the publication of E.C. Bentley’s schismatic Trent’s Last Case in 1913, but it hit its stride in 1920 when both Agatha Christie and Freeman Wills Crofts – latterly crowned queen and king of the genre – had crime novels published for the first time. They ushered in two decades of exemplary mystery writing, the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.This new volume in the Bodies from the Library series features the work of 18 prolific authors who, like Christie and Crofts, saw their popularity soar during the Golden Age. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction – stories, serials and plays – and although most of them have been collected in books over the last 100 years, here are the ones that got away…In this book you will encounter classic series detectives including Colonel Gore, Roger Sheringham, Hildegarde Withers and Henri Bencolin; Hercule Poirot solves ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’; Roderick Alleyn returns to New Zealand in a recently discovered television drama by Ngaio Marsh; and Dorothy L. Sayers’ chilling ‘The House of the Poplars’ is published for the first time.With a full-length novella by John Dickson Carr and an unpublished radio script by Cyril Hare, this diverse collection concludes with some early ‘flash fiction’ commissioned by Collins’ Crime Club in 1938. Each mini story had to feature an orange, resulting in six very different tales from Peter Cheyney, Ethel Lina White, David Hume, Nicholas Blake, John Rhode and – in his only foray into writing detective fiction – the publisher himself, William Collins.

This annual anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a short novel by Christianna Brand. Mystery stories have been around for centuries—there are whodunits, whydunits and howdunits, including locked-room puzzles, detective stories without detectives, and crimes with a limited choice of suspects.Countless volumes of such stories have been published, but some are still impossible to find: stories that appeared in a newspaper, magazine or an anthology that has long been out of print; ephemeral works such as plays not aired, staged or screened for decades; and unpublished stories that were absorbed into an author’s archive when they died . . .Here for the first time are three never-before-published mysteries by Edmund Crispin, Ngaio Marsh and Leo Bruce, and two pieces written for radio by Gladys Mitchell and H. C. Bailey—the latter featuring Reggie Fortune.Together with a newly unearthed short story by Ethel Lina White that inspired Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, and a complete short novel by Christianna Brand, this diverse mix of tales by some of the world’s most popular classic crime writers contains something for everyone.Complete with indispensable biographies by Tony Medawar of all the featured authors, the fourth volume in the series Bodies from the Library once again brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown.

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the second volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.DEATH IN ECSTASYWho slipped cyanide into the ceremonial wine of ecstasy at the House of the Sacred Flame? The other initiates and the High Priest claim to be above earthly passions. But Roderick Alleyn discovers that the victim had provoked lust and jealousy, and he suspects that more evil still lurks behind the Sign of the Sacred Flame…VINTAGE MURDERNew Zealand theatrical manager Alfred Meyer is planning a surprise for his wife's birthday – a jeroboam of champagne descending gently onto the stage after the performance. But, as Roderick Alleyn witnesses, something goes horribly wrong. Is the death the product of Maori superstitions – or something more down to earth?ARTISTS IN CRIMEIt starts as an art exercise – the knife under the drape, the pose outlined in chalk. But when Agatha Troy returns to her class, the scene has been re-enacted: the model is dead, fixed in the most dramatic pose Troy has ever seen. It's a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn. Is the woman he loves really a murderess…?

The new series of Ngaio Marsh editions concludes with a new edition of her autobiography.What sort of person was Ngaio Marsh, whose detective novels made her name known throughout the world? With all the insight and sense of style her readers have come to expect of her, her autobiography reveals the influences and environment that have shaped her personality.Widely acclaimed when first published in 1965, Black Beech and Honeydew is a sensitive account of Ngaio Marsh’s childhood and adolescence in Christchurch and the establishment of her theatre and writing careers both there and in the UK. It captures all the joys, fears and hopes of a spirited young woman growing up and transmits an artist’s gradual awareness of the special flavour of life in New Zealand and the individual character of its landscape.Fully revised and updated in 1981, this new edition is reissued 21 years later as a commemoration of Ngaio Marsh’s life and work. It is a sanguine, poised, unpretentious, thoughtful and often moving record of a full life, and – despite its unavailability for nearly 20 years – has been acclaimed as her most distinguished work. No one who had read and enjoyed any of Ngaio Marsh’s 32 novels can afford to overlook this gifted and charming autobiography.

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 18 tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including uncollected stories by Ngaio Marsh and John Dickson Carr. The Golden Age of detective fiction had begun inauspiciously with the publication of E.C. Bentley’s schismatic Trent’s Last Case in 1913, but it hit its stride in 1920 when both Agatha Christie and Freeman Wills Crofts – latterly crowned queen and king of the genre – had crime novels published for the first time. They ushered in two decades of exemplary mystery writing, the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.This new volume in the Bodies from the Library series features the work of 18 prolific authors who, like Christie and Crofts, saw their popularity soar during the Golden Age. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction – stories, serials and plays – and although most of them have been collected in books over the last 100 years, here are the ones that got away…In this book you will encounter classic series detectives including Colonel Gore, Roger Sheringham, Hildegarde Withers and Henri Bencolin; Hercule Poirot solves ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’; Roderick Alleyn returns to New Zealand in a recently discovered television drama by Ngaio Marsh; and Dorothy L. Sayers’ chilling ‘The House of the Poplars’ is published for the first time.With a full-length novella by John Dickson Carr and an unpublished radio script by Cyril Hare, this diverse collection concludes with some early ‘flash fiction’ commissioned by Collins’ Crime Club in 1938. Each mini story had to feature an orange, resulting in six very different tales from Peter Cheyney, Ethel Lina White, David Hume, Nicholas Blake, John Rhode and – in his only foray into writing detective fiction – the publisher himself, William Collins.

Murder and mayhem strike when a small group of people are confined to an island in the middle of a New Zealand lake in one of Ngaio Marsh’s last – and best – novels.The luxury mansion on New Zealand’s Lake Waihoe was the ideal place for the world-famous soprano to rest after her triumphant tour. Chief Superintendent Alleyn and his wife were among the house guests – but theirs was not a social visit.When tragedy struck, the peace of the island was shattered. With a houseful of suspects, now isolated by one of the lake’s sudden storms, Alleyn was to face one of his trickiest cases…

The complete series of Ngaio Marsh reissues concludes with the re-publication of this 20th anniversary edition of this, her final novel.Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of Macbeth, the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck.But one night the claymore swings and the dummy’s head is more than real: murder behind the scene.Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience…

Ngaio Marsh’s most popular novel begins when a young New Zealander’s first contact with the English gentry is the body of Lord Wutherford – with a meat skewer through the eye…The Lampreys had plenty of charm – but no cash. They all knew they were peculiar – and rather gloried in it. The double and triple charades, for instance, with which they would entertain their guests – like rich but awful Uncle Gabriel, who was always such a bore. The Lampreys thought if they jollied him up he would bail them out – yet again.Instead, Uncle Gabriel met a violent end. And Chief Inspector Alleyn had to work our which of them killed him…

A winter weekend ends in snowbound disaster in a novel which remains a favourite among Marsh readers.It began as an entertainment: eight people, many of them enemies, gathered for a winter weekend by a host with a love for theatre. They would be the characters in a drama that he would devise.It ended in snowbound disaster. Everyone had an alibi – and most a motive as well. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, when he finally arrived, knew it all hung on Thomas, the dancing footman…

Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand’s North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel.It was a horrible death – Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he’d hated, the New Zealanders he’d despised or the Maoris he’d insulted. Even the spies he’d thwarted – if he wasn’t a spy himself…

Ngaio Marsh returns to her New Zealand roots to transplant the classic country house murder mystery to an upland sheep station on South Island – and produces one of her most exotic and intriguing novels.One summer evening in 1942 Flossie Rubrick, MP, one of the most formidable women in New Zealand, goes to her husband’s wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech – and disappears.Three weeks later she turns up at an auction – packed inside one of her own bales of wool and very, very dead…

A classic Ngaio Marsh novel reissued in B-format.Dreams of stardom had lured Martyn Tarne from faraway New Zealand to make the dreary, soul-destroying round of West End agents and managers in search of work. The Vulcan Theatre had been her last forlorn hope, and now, driven by sheer necessity, she was glad to accept the humble job of dresser to its leading lady.And then came the eagerly awaited Opening Night. To Martyn the night brought a strange turn of the wheel of fortune – but to one distinguished member of the cast it was to bring sudden and unforeseen death…

Pagan revelry and morris dancing in the middle of a very cold winter set the scene for one of Ngaio Marsh’s most fascinating murder mysteries.When the pesky Anna Bünz arrives at Mardian to investigate the rare survival of folk-dancing still practised there, she quickly antagonizes the villagers. But Mrs Bünz is not the only source of friction – two of the other enthusiasts are also spoiling for a fight.When the sword dancers’ traditional mock beheading of the Winter Solstice becomes horribly real, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn finds himself faced with a case of great complexity and of gruesome proportions…

The restoration of a bombed-out London theatre ends in violent death – and one of Marsh’s most vivid and dramatic novelsWhen the bombed-out Dolphin Theatre is given to Peregrine Jay by a mysterious wealthy patron, he is overjoyed. And when the mysterious oil millionaire also gives him a glove that belonged to Shakespeare, Peregrine displays it in the dockside theatre and writes a successful play about it.But then a murder takes place, a boy is attacked, the glove is stolen. Could it be that oil and water don’t mix? Inspector Roderick Alleyn is determined to find out…

A classic Ngaio Marsh novel reissued in B-format.The Crime was committed on stage at the Unicorn Theatre, when an unloaded gun fired a very real bullet; the Victim was Arthur Surbonadier, an actor clawing his way to stardom using blackmail instead of talent; the Suspects included two unwilling girlfriends and several relieved blackmail victims.The stage was set for one of Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn's most baffling cases…

Ngaio Marsh’s bestselling and ingenious third novel remains one of the most popular pieces of crime fiction of all time.Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse Jane Harden are almost too nervous to operate. The emergency case on the table before them is the Home Secretary – and they both have very good, personal reasons to wish him dead.Within hours he does die, although the operation itself was a complete success, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn must find out why…

A touring theatre company in New Zealand forms the basis of one of Marsh’s most ambitious and innovative novels.New Zealand theatrical manager Alfred Meyer wanted to celebrate his wife’s birthday in style. The piece de résistance would be the jeroboam of champagne which would descend gently into a nest of fern and coloured lights on the table, set up on stage after the performance.But something went horribly wrong. Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn witnessed it himself. Was Meyer’s death the product of Maori superstitions? Or something much more down to earth?

One of Ngaio Marsh’s most famous murder mysteries, which introduces Inspector Alleyn to his future wife, the irrepressible Agatha Troy.It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model’s pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been re-enacted in earnest: the model is dead, fixed for ever in one of the most dramatic poses Troy has ever seen.It’s a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn. How can he believe that the woman he loves is a murderess? And yet no one can be above suspicion…

A body in the back of a taxi begins an elegantly constructed mystery, perhaps the finest of Marsh’s 1930s novels.The season had begun. Débutantes and chaperones were planning their luncheons, teas, dinners, balls. And the blackmailer was planning his strategies, stalking his next victim.But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that something was up. He had already planted his friend Lord Robert Gospell at the scene.But someone else got there first…

A classic Ngaio Marsh novel in which she more than lives up to her reputation as a crime writer of intelligence and style.It was planned as an act of charity: a new piano for the parish hall, an amusing play to finance the gift.But its execution was doomed when Miss Campanula sat down to play. A chord was struck, a shot rang out and Miss Campanula was dead.A case of sinister infatuation for the brilliant Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn.

A classic Ngaio Marsh novel which features blood-curdling murders in the confines of a riverboat, the Zodiac, cruising through Constable country.’He looks upon the murders that he did in fact perform as tiresome and regrettable necessities,’ reflected Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn on the international crook known as ‘the Jampot’.But it was Alleyn’s wife Troy who knew ‘the Jampot’ best: she had shared close quarters with him on the tiny pleasure steamer Zodiac on a cruise along the peaceful rivers of ‘Constable country’. And it was she who knew something was badly wrong even before Alleyn was called in to solve the two murders on board…