Mystery Monday: Death of a Peer by Ngaio Marsh

A review of a far-from-new murder mystery by one of the greats.

Death of a Peer, by Ngaio Marsh.  303 pages, paperback.
Originally published by Little, Brown & Co. in 1940
I sourced my copy from the local library.

Summary:
An early entry in Marsh's impressive collection of mysteries featuring Roderick Alleyn, of Scotland Yard, the book begins with a prelude set in New Zealand.  We are introduced to the central characters (exclusive of Alleyn), Roberta Grey and the Lamprey family.  She a local NZ kid, they a modestly noble family out from England to await a better turn in their finances.  Fast forward ten years, and a 20-ish Roberta arrives in England to live with an aunt, but instead goes to the Lamprey's in time to be there when their wealthy kinsman the Marquis of Wutherwood is murdered in their home.  Enter Alleyn, to solve this classic locked-door mystery.

Review:
Marsh is definitely not a modern writer (in the lower-case sense of "modern," i.e. writing now).  The style of the book is somewhat formal, and the story is more of an exercise in the use of the "little grey cells" (to borrow from her contemporary) than an exciting adventure.  But if the careful tracing of the alibis and effort to spot the holes before Alleyn does is your kind of game, it's very well done.

I also found it interesting that the story is much more about Roberta Grey and the Lampreys than it is about the author's famous detective.  We spend a great deal more time inside Roberta's head than Alleyn's, and in fact care more about her outcome.  This is good and bad--good, because she does it well and I found myself caring about these people, but bad because it reduces the possible outcomes--you are pretty confident that the chap she falls in love with will not be the guilty party (not from this era, or this genre.  In other books, I might have been less confident).  That may, in fact, be the biggest weakness in this well-assembled puzzle.

I think that some of Ngaio Marsh's later books are more appealing today.  But this is well-written and the mystery is worked out well, with characters we care about enough to want it solved.

Full Disclosure: I borrowed this copy of Death of a Peer from the library, and received nothing whatsoever from the author or publisher in exchange for my honest review.  The opinions expressed in this review are my own and no one else's.

M is for More Mysteries: MacLeod and Marsh

 

It's Mystery Monday again, and I'm back to suggest some more of my more-cozy-than-gory mystery favorites.

First up, the grande dame of goofy mysteries and unfettered fun with the English language: Charlotte MacLeod (also wrote at Alisa Craig).  MacLeod wrote several series of mysteries that were never afraid to abuse alliteration, name characters with Dickensian significance, and require the ever-so-willing suspension of disbelief.

Set in Boston, the Sarah Kelling/Max Bittersohn books waltz through the somewhat ingrown soi-dissant upper crust of New England Society (and don't leave off that capital S!).  Max is a detective by trade, but his trade deals with stolen artworks, so the number of bodies he and Sarah stumble over through the years is shocking, but the murders are less disturbing than Uncle Jem Kelling's tales of his extremely misspent youth.

MacLeod's second main series is even more deeply entrenched in word play and bizarre local history (this time in the totally fictional setting of Balaclava County, somewhere upstate from Boston.  Way up state) and the Balaclava Agricultural College.  Professor Peter Shandy is known worldwide for breeding the Balaclava Buster, a turnip that has revolutionized livestock feed, but he is increasingly known locally for solving mysteries.  Usually he is more than a little spurred on by the college president, a Norwegian of mythological proportions known as Thorkjeld Svenson.

Additional stand-alone books and two other short series, the Madoc Rhys books and the Grub-and-Stakers Garden Club books, are set in the almost equally mythological land of Canada (as she explained it, due to family history, Canada was where the stories came from).  The latter series perhaps takes the greatest leave of reality, and embrace of the absurd, of any.

There is nothing serious or substantial about Charlotte MacLeod's books.  But they are a heck of a lot of fun, and clean enough for anyone.

Ngaio Marsh is a much more serious writer, of the earlier and more literary period of British mystery writing (even though she was a New Zealander), one of the four "Queens of Crime" between the wars (the other three, if you care, are Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Margery Allingham).   Marsh's books feature Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, and the murders are only slightly more graphic than MacLeod's, but the detective process is a great deal more complex, in the puzzle-unwinding style popular in the period.  

Alleyn is urbane, of the nobility (however much he has let down the side by becoming a cop), and eventually married to Agatha Troy, an artist.  This last allowed Marsh to indulge her love of the art and theatre worlds.  Cozy is probably not the right word for these mysteries, but they are definitely more intellectual pursuits than thrillers, and well worth reading both for a well-crafted story and her excellent use of the language.  As her work spanned the years from 1934 to 1982, there are notable differences in style as you progress.  Marsh dealt with the changes over time, as near as I can tell, mostly by ignoring chronology and aging the characters as she saw fit, while the world advanced around them.