Category: #3GrandDames

In Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh, first published in 1962, Nicola Maitland-Mayne travels by train to the small town of Codling, during which journey she meets Andrew Bantling. Hired by Mr. Percival Pyke Period …

Mary Bellamy is excited to celebrate her 50th birthday with a party in which all the best stars in the theater world will attend in Ngaio Marsh’s False Scent. Mary is deeply self-centered and reminds …

A serial killer is at work in what becomes one of Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn’s most urgent and dramatic cases in Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh. The S.S. Cape Farewell sets sail …

The winter solstice is nearing, and South Mardian is preparing for its local mummery play that the community has held on Sword Wednesday for centuries, passing along the music and dance orally for the Dance …

The people of Swevenings live very insulated lives. Nurse Kettle makes her rounds of the four families in the community: the blueblood Lacklanders, Octavius (Occy) Phinn, Commander Syce, and the Cartaretts. Sir Harold Lacklander, a …

The Alleyns take a family trip, with Troy and Ricky joining Rory Alleyn in the South of France in Ngaio Marsh’s Spinsters in Jeopardy. They find themselves in a situation where Detective Chief Inspector Roderick …

Martyne Tarne has been in England from New Zealand for two weeks, and her money is about to run out when she happens upon the Vulcan Theater in Night at the Vulcan, also published as …

Ngaio Marsh enters the post-war years in 1949’s Swing, Brother, Swing, titled A Wreath for Rivera in America and still published under that name on my version of the audiobook. Lord George Pastern, renowned for …

Famous painter Agatha Troy has three weeks to wait for the return of Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn from four years’ service in New Zealand during the Second World War as Ngaio Marsh’s Final Curtain …

Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, in New Zealand during World War II to track down spies, both from outside and from within, travels to the countryside where ranchers keep sheep to investigate a year-old murder …