Ngaio Marsh roundup
Apr. 10th, 2012 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylThis years bout of obsessive spring reading has focused heavily on Ngaio Marsh — there have been a handful of other things, which, hopefully, I get round to writing up at some point, but the Roderick Alleyn Mysteries have dominated the last couple of months. Not without merit — although 50 years worth of novels in a few weeks unflatteringly emphasizes some of Marsh's standard tropes — there are a handful that standout from the crowd for one reason or another.
The first novel that really stood out for me was Artists in Crime, which is set against the backdrop of an art course run by Agatha Troy. When the life model is killed in a particularly gruesome way — impaled on a knife concealed on posing couch — Alleyn, who happens to staying near by, is called in to investigate. The book does a good job of imagining the bohemian temperaments of the artists, complete with jealous and blackmail and clandestine pregnancies, while the off-balance relation between Troy and Alleyn is nicely done — I particularly like the way the normally suave and self-possessed Alleyn appears positively gauche in his encounters with Troy.
The next to catch my fancy was Death in a White Tie, which takes place a few months after Artists and features some of the same characters — specifically, Agatha Troy and Lady Helena Alleyn. When Lord Robert Gospell is murdered in a taxi on the way home from a debutant ball, Alleyn suspects that he has been killed because he has uncovered the identity of a society blackmailer. The highpoint of the book is the setting: Alleyn's tour of the house where the ball took place, full of overflowing ashtrays and empty champagne bottles, mirrors the fin de siecle tiredness of the older participants. The society characters are drawn warts and all: one is shown as being anti-Semitic, another is a bully and fraud, while a third exhibits a casual snobbery of his hosts' artistic tastes. The characters' attitudes also catch the changing sensibilities of the generations: a conservative secretary is mortified when forced to reveal that she visited the lavatory during the ball, whereas the ingenue couple happily pay an unchaperoned visit to a nightclub.
Although not entirely satisfying as a mystery, A Surfeit of Lampreys is a particularly effective blend of the comic and the gothic. Facing imminent bankruptcy, the chaotic and eccentric Lampreys decide to call on Lord Charles' penny-pinching brother for help. But all does not go to plan and after an angry encounter, Gabriel, Marquis Wutherwood, is found in his brother's lift dying from a stab wound to the eye. Called in to investigate Alleyn finds himself wrestling with the slippery but fundamentally decent Lamprey family only for farce to turn to Grand Guignol when Henry Lamprey and Roberta Grey, the ingenue couple, find themselves forced to spend the night in the same vast and gloomy house as the increasingly crazy (and black magic obsessed) Lady Violet and the dead body of Lord Wutherwood.
Since no overview of Marsh would be complete without a theatre mystery, I've gone for Opening Night, with Death at the Dolphin a close second, because I think it does a better job at capturing the spirit of the theatre and the cost of dreams. Set against the backdrop of the Vulcan Theatre, the early plot unfolds from the perspective of a young New Zealand actress, Martyn Tarne, who gets promoted from an understudy to play one of the leads on opening night after one of the principle ingenue suffers a nervous collapse. But the triumph of the night is shattered when one of the actors, a notorious alcoholic married to leading lady and cuckolded by the leading man, kills himself in his dressing room. Arriving shortly after the death, Alleyn and Fox set about interviewing the cast and crew of the Vulcan in an attempt to determine whether the death really was self-inflicted. The book features well drawn characters, a likeable lead in the form of Martyn Tarne, a couple of nice touches period touches — it is suggested that the play has Satrean elements — and the return, in a cameo role, of PC Lord Michael Lamprey.
Of the later novels I'd suggest A Clutch of Constables, in which Alleyn, via a lecture to a group of police cadets, tells the story of his wife's impulsive decision to take a river cruise. As the MV Zodiac cruises through the flat landscape — Lincolnshire, possible? — Troy becomes increasingly aware that all is not well: the Ethiopian Dr Natouche finds himself on the receiving end of some particularly unpleasant racism; Troy find the spinsterly Miss Rickerby-Carrick a little trying; and someone reacts very badly to a throwaway comment about the landscape being full of Constables wherever one looks. Despite featuring a villain with the worst nickname ever — jampot! — the story itself is rather charming, especially Troy's embarrassment about her celebrity status and the delight she takes in painting the signs of the zodiac using her fellow travellers as model.
In general the books are likeable and amusing, if they're not particularly profound, they generally feature something of interest — I certainly learnt a lot of stage terminology from the theatrical books. Although the class attitudes seem dated — although, to be fair, the aristocracy are often shown in an absurd light — Marsh avoids most of the usual pitfalls and has her characters go out of their way to condemn racism or to take a tolerant line on drink and drug problems.
The first novel that really stood out for me was Artists in Crime, which is set against the backdrop of an art course run by Agatha Troy. When the life model is killed in a particularly gruesome way — impaled on a knife concealed on posing couch — Alleyn, who happens to staying near by, is called in to investigate. The book does a good job of imagining the bohemian temperaments of the artists, complete with jealous and blackmail and clandestine pregnancies, while the off-balance relation between Troy and Alleyn is nicely done — I particularly like the way the normally suave and self-possessed Alleyn appears positively gauche in his encounters with Troy.
The next to catch my fancy was Death in a White Tie, which takes place a few months after Artists and features some of the same characters — specifically, Agatha Troy and Lady Helena Alleyn. When Lord Robert Gospell is murdered in a taxi on the way home from a debutant ball, Alleyn suspects that he has been killed because he has uncovered the identity of a society blackmailer. The highpoint of the book is the setting: Alleyn's tour of the house where the ball took place, full of overflowing ashtrays and empty champagne bottles, mirrors the fin de siecle tiredness of the older participants. The society characters are drawn warts and all: one is shown as being anti-Semitic, another is a bully and fraud, while a third exhibits a casual snobbery of his hosts' artistic tastes. The characters' attitudes also catch the changing sensibilities of the generations: a conservative secretary is mortified when forced to reveal that she visited the lavatory during the ball, whereas the ingenue couple happily pay an unchaperoned visit to a nightclub.
Although not entirely satisfying as a mystery, A Surfeit of Lampreys is a particularly effective blend of the comic and the gothic. Facing imminent bankruptcy, the chaotic and eccentric Lampreys decide to call on Lord Charles' penny-pinching brother for help. But all does not go to plan and after an angry encounter, Gabriel, Marquis Wutherwood, is found in his brother's lift dying from a stab wound to the eye. Called in to investigate Alleyn finds himself wrestling with the slippery but fundamentally decent Lamprey family only for farce to turn to Grand Guignol when Henry Lamprey and Roberta Grey, the ingenue couple, find themselves forced to spend the night in the same vast and gloomy house as the increasingly crazy (and black magic obsessed) Lady Violet and the dead body of Lord Wutherwood.
Since no overview of Marsh would be complete without a theatre mystery, I've gone for Opening Night, with Death at the Dolphin a close second, because I think it does a better job at capturing the spirit of the theatre and the cost of dreams. Set against the backdrop of the Vulcan Theatre, the early plot unfolds from the perspective of a young New Zealand actress, Martyn Tarne, who gets promoted from an understudy to play one of the leads on opening night after one of the principle ingenue suffers a nervous collapse. But the triumph of the night is shattered when one of the actors, a notorious alcoholic married to leading lady and cuckolded by the leading man, kills himself in his dressing room. Arriving shortly after the death, Alleyn and Fox set about interviewing the cast and crew of the Vulcan in an attempt to determine whether the death really was self-inflicted. The book features well drawn characters, a likeable lead in the form of Martyn Tarne, a couple of nice touches period touches — it is suggested that the play has Satrean elements — and the return, in a cameo role, of PC Lord Michael Lamprey.
Of the later novels I'd suggest A Clutch of Constables, in which Alleyn, via a lecture to a group of police cadets, tells the story of his wife's impulsive decision to take a river cruise. As the MV Zodiac cruises through the flat landscape — Lincolnshire, possible? — Troy becomes increasingly aware that all is not well: the Ethiopian Dr Natouche finds himself on the receiving end of some particularly unpleasant racism; Troy find the spinsterly Miss Rickerby-Carrick a little trying; and someone reacts very badly to a throwaway comment about the landscape being full of Constables wherever one looks. Despite featuring a villain with the worst nickname ever — jampot! — the story itself is rather charming, especially Troy's embarrassment about her celebrity status and the delight she takes in painting the signs of the zodiac using her fellow travellers as model.
In general the books are likeable and amusing, if they're not particularly profound, they generally feature something of interest — I certainly learnt a lot of stage terminology from the theatrical books. Although the class attitudes seem dated — although, to be fair, the aristocracy are often shown in an absurd light — Marsh avoids most of the usual pitfalls and has her characters go out of their way to condemn racism or to take a tolerant line on drink and drug problems.
