Ngaio Marsh
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
Crime comes to a country house: “Any Ngaio Marsh story is certain to be Grade A, and this one is no exception.” —The New York Times
This classic from the Golden Age of British mystery opens during a country-house party between the two world wars—servants bustling, gin flowing, the gentlemen in dinner jackets, the ladies all slink and smolder. Even more delicious: The host, Sir Hubert Handesley, has invented...
This classic from the Golden Age of British mystery opens during a country-house party between the two world wars—servants bustling, gin flowing, the gentlemen in dinner jackets, the ladies all slink and smolder. Even more delicious: The host, Sir Hubert Handesley, has invented...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
"For one unlucky Member of Parliament, a simple visit to the hospital (the 'nursing home' of the title) proves fatal. But as Inspector Alleyn will discover, any number of people had reason to help the gentleman to his just reward, including the sour surgeon, his besotted nurse, a resentful wife, and a cabinet full of political rivals."--P. [4] of cover.
3) Photo finish
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 31
Language
English
Formats
Description
Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, C.I.D., Scotland Yard, must identify "Strix" (a dangerous shutterbug) among the assemblage of luminaries gathered at the New Zealand hideaway of the opera star La Sommita's wealthy patron.
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 32
Language
English
Description
"The bad news: This is the last in Ngaio Marsh s marvelous Inspector Alleyn series. The good: It s one of her very best. The secret to Light Thickens success may lie in its combination of some of Marsh s greatest passions, including her native New Zealand in the person of, unusually, a Maori character and the theater. Indeed, the plot centers on a production of well, let s skirt disaster by calling it the Scottish play, a play that Dame Ngaio produced...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Inspector Roderick Alleyn has been invited to an opening night, a new play in which two characters quarrel and then struggle for a gun, with predictably sad results. Even sadder, the gun was not, in fact, loaded with blanks. And when it comes to interviewing witnesses, actors can be a deceptive lot ...
Author
Series
Language
English
Description
The unspeakably wealthy (and generally unspeakable) Jonathan Royal has decided to throw a party and, just for fun, has studded the guest-list with people who loathe one another. When a blizzard imprisons them all in Royal?s country house, murder ensues. In true Christie-esque tradition, there are nearly as many suspects as there are potential victims. Eventually, Inspector Alleyn makes his way through the snow to put things right.
7) When in Rome
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
While vacationing in Rome, Inspector Roderick Alleyn comes face to face with murder when one of the members of his tour group is killed and a shady tour guide mysteriously vanishes.
8) Dead water
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
A spring may have healing properties-but the controversy over it may have harmful results-in a witty mystery by a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.
The elderly Emily Pride is perfectly pleased to have inherited an island, even if her starchy pragmatism is ever-so-faintly appalled by the island's "Pixie Falls" spring and its reported miraculous healing properties. Really, the locals' attempts to capitalize on the "miracles" are entirely too...
Author
Language
English
Description
A police inspector finds trouble during a trip to New Zealand: "It's time to start comparing Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around." -New York Magazine
Inspector Roderick Alleyn has taken a break from England and journeyed to New Zealand, and traveling along with him are the members of the Carolyn Dacres English Comedy Company. The actors' operatic intrigues offer an amusing diversion-until, unexpectedly, they turn deadly. And Alleyn...
10) Death at the bar
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 9
Language
English
Formats
Description
A game of darts does involve some danger, but it's rarely lethal. There are exceptions, however, like the famous barrister who was enjoying a pint at the Plume of Feathers pub, and is now residing at the morgue. But Inspector Roderick Alleyn has a growing hunch that this peculiar "accident" can be traced to an old legal case ...
11) Hand in glove
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
One has to admit that the timing was peculiar. No one could doubt that Mr. Percival Pyke Period was genuinely distraught to hear that his neighbor, Harry Cartell, had turned up dead in a ditch. But how is it that Mr. Percival Pyke came to write the letter of condolence before the body was found? And how is it that Mr. Cartell came to inspire such violence? Yes he was boring, yes he was stuffy, but who would kill a man for the crime of being a bad...
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 18
Language
English
Formats
Description
Scales of Justice is most powerfully reminiscent of Agatha Christie, with its setting in an almost unspeakably charming little English village, and its cast of inbred aristocrats. When one of the aristos turns up dead next to the local trout-stream with a trout at his side everyone is dreadfully upset, but really, just a tad irritated as well: Murder is so awfully messy. Thank gawd that nice Inspector Alleyn is on hand to clear things up.
Author
Language
English
Description
Murder strikes a sour note at a jazz concert in this classic detective novel from the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.
Lord Pastern and Bagott is given to passionate, peculiar enthusiasms, the latest of which is drumming in a jazz band. His wife is not amused, and she is even less so when her daughter falls for Carlos Rivera, the band's sleazy accordion player. Nobody likes Rivera very much, so there's a wealth of suspects when he is shot...
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 33
Language
English
Formats
Description
"Inspector Alleyn just wants to write a letter to his wife, but World War II, for one, keeps intruding. It's war-work, after all, that has brought Alleyn to this seedy hospital in New Zealand's hinterlands, and it's the war that has left the hospital swimming in convalescing soldiers - noisy, often drunk, and always over-interested in the nurses. Nor is the weather helping. A storm has killed the electrical power, leaving Alleyn, the soldiers, the...
15) Killer dolphin
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 24
Language
English
Formats
Description
London's chattering about a new playhouse and spreading theater gossip until a murder takes center-stage.
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
The good ship Cape Farewell is steaming out to sea, with a passenger-list and crew fairly littered with the shifty, the twitchy, the peculiar, and the up-to-no-good. Arguably, the up-to-no-goodest is a strangler with a romantic streak: He likes to leave his ladies with a flower and a charming little song. The latest of the ladies is currently lying on a fogbound London dock, mute witness to the fact that Inspector Alleyn-long on the strangler's trail-has...
17) False scent
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Mary Bellamy is the sweetheart of the London stage, fluffy as only an elderly lady of 50(!) can be. Her fans and friends-- and who didn't adore, positively adore darling Mary?-- are heartbroken when somehow Mary manages to spritz herself not with her favorite perfume but with the deadly insecticide meant to be sprayed on the azaleas. Inspector Alleyn begins by smelling something fishy (everything he learns about lovely, fragile Mary suggests that...
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
Agatha Troy (the artist wife of Inspector Alleyn) has a special fondness for Constable's work, so she jumps at the chance to take a river-cruise through Constable country in the east of England. Her enthusiasm dims a little when it becomes clear that the ticket became available at the last minute only because a previous passenger was murdered, it seems, by a notorious international criminal known as the Jampot. The murder's don't stop there - and...
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 16
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A shabby, fourth-rate theater, the Vulcan is not where Martyn Tarne hoped to work, when she moved from New Zealand to London in hope of a glittering acting career. But a girl has to eat, so Martyn takes a job as dresser to the Vulcan's leading lady. This provides her with a ringside seat to the backstage circus: the aging alcoholic actor, the waspish playwright, the ingénue on the make, the surprisingly gracious grande dame. There is, of course,...
20) Died in the wool
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 13
Language
English
Formats
Description
"World War II rages on, and Inspector Alleyn continues as the Special Branch's eyes and ears in New Zealand. While his primary brief is spy-catching, he's also happy to help with old-fashioned policing. Flossie Rubrick, an influential Member of Parliament and the wife of a sheep farmer, is murdered. Had she made political enemies? Had a mysterious legacy prompted her death? Or could the shadowy world of international espionage have intruded on this...