Category: #3GrandDames

It is 1943, deep in the midst of World War II, and Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn has been sent to New Zealand to look for spies when he gets a letter from Dr. James …

In Death and the Dancing Footman, one of Ngaio Marsh’s most creative, complex, and crazy books, Jonathan Royal has decided that he needs to work out his aesthetic cravings. However, Jonathan is no good at …

Ngaio Marsh published her 10th Roderick Alleyn novel in 1941’s A Surfeit of Lampreys, set in 1940. Roberta “Robin” Grey, a girl from New Zealand, has become star-struck with an English noble family, the Lampreys, …

Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn goes to the small village of Chipping in 1939’s Overture to Death, published during the height of Ngaio Marsh’s heyday. The local church really needs a new piano, so a …

As we continue our survey of the books of Ngaio Marsh, we get to what is perhaps my favorite book, 1938’s Death in a White Tie. Someone has been actively blackmailing socialites amid those “doing …

Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn is on his way back to England after a year abroad for his health in Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh, published in 1938. At the port in Suva, Fiji, …

Vintage Murder takes us readers on our first trip with Ngaio Marsh to her home of New Zealand. Ordered abroad for his health, Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn joins up with the Carolyn Dacres English …

Sir Derek O’Callaghan, Home Secretary of England, has been too anxiously pushing through an anti-anarchy bill in Parliament to deal with the growing pain in his stomach in 1935’s The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio …

Ngaio Marsh publishes her first novel set in her own personal world of the theater in her second book, 1935’s Enter a Murderer. Nigel Bathgate, the journalist introduced in A Man Lay Dead, gets tickets …

Ngaio Marsh published her first novel in 1934’s A man Lay Dead. Nigel Hawthorne gets invited to a weekend party at the estate of Sir Hubert Handesley, joining his cousin Charles Rankin, a well-known socialite. …