Books in series
#1
A Man Lay Dead
1934
At Sir Hubert Handesley's country house party, five guests have gathered for the uproarious parlor game of "Murder." Yet no one is laughing when the lights come up on an actual corpse, the good-looking and mysterious Charles Rankin. Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives to find a complete collection of alibis, a missing butler, and an intricate puzzle of betrayal and sedition in the search for the key player in this deadly game.
#2
Enter a Murderer
1935
A classic Ngaio Marsh novel reissued - the second Roderick Alleyn Mystery. The crime scene was the stage of the Unicorn Theatre, when prop gun fired a very real bullet; the victim was an actor clawing his way to stardom using bribery instead of talent; and the suspects included two unwilling girlfriends and several relieved blackmail victims. The stage is set for one of Roderick Alleyn′s most baffling cases...
#3
The Nursing Home Murder
1935
Ngaio Marsh's bestselling and ingenious third novel remains one of the most popular pieces of crime fiction of all time. Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse Jane Harden are almost too nervous to operate. The emergency case on the table before them is the Home Secretary—and they both have very good, personal reasons to wish him dead. Within hours he does die, although the operation itself was a complete success, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn must find out why!
#4
Death in Ecstasy
1936
When lovely Cara Quayne dropped dead to the floor after drinking the ritual wine at the House of the Sacred Flame, she was having a religious experience of a sort unsuspected by the other initiates. Discovering how the fatal prussic acid got into the bizarre group's wine is but one of the perplexing riddles that confronts Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn when he's called to discover who sent this wealthy cult member to her untimely death.
#5
Vintage Murder
1937
Death served well-chilled
The leading lady of a theater company touring New Zealand was stunningly beautiful. No one-including her lover-understood why she married the company's pudgy producer. But did she rig a huge jeroboam of champagne to kill her husband during a cast party?
Did her sweetheart? Or was another villain waiting in the wings? On a holiday down under, Inspector Roderick Alleyn must uncork this mystery and uncover a devious killer...
#6
Artists in Crime
1938
The art of detection gets clouded by desire.
It was a bizarre pose for beautiful model Sonia Gluck-and her last. For in the draperies of her couch lay a fatal dagger, and behind her murder lies all the intrigue and acid-etched temperament of an artist's colony. Called in to investigate, Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn finds his own passions unexpectedly stirred by the feisty painter Agatha Troy-brilliant artist and suspected murderess.
#7
Death in a White Tie
1938
A body in the back of a taxi begins an elegantly constructed mystery, perhaps the finest of Marsh's 1930s novels.The season had begun. Debutantes and chaperones were planning their luncheons, teas, dinners, balls. And the blackmailer was planning his strategies, stalking his next victim.But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that something was up. He had already planted his friend Lord Robert Gospell at the scene.But someone else got there first...
#8
Overture to Death
1939
It was planned as an act of a new piano for the parish hall, an amusing play to finance the gift. But its execution was doomed when Miss Campanula sat down to play. A chord was struck, a shot rang out and Miss Campanula was dead. A case of sinister infatuation for the brilliant Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn.
#9
Death at the Bar
1940
A cosy game of darts in a cosy English pub is going well until one of the players dies on the spot. Chief Inspector Alleyn knows it wasn't the dart that killed him, but the prussic acid someone added to the cut.
#10
Death of a Peer
1940
Murder becomes a family affair...
The Lampreys were a charming, eccentric happy-go-lucky family, teetering on the edge of financial ruin. Until the gruesome murder of their uncle-and unpleasant Marquis, who met his untimely death while leaving the Lamprey flat-left them with a fortune. Now it's up to Inspector Roderick Alleyn to sift through the alibis to discover which Lamprey hides a ruthless killer behind an amiable facade...
#11
Death and the Dancing Footman
1941
The party's over when murder makes an entrance...
With the notion of bringing together the most bitter of enemies for his own amusement, a bored, mischievous millionaire throws a house party. As a brutal snowstorm strands the unhappy guests, the party receives a most unwelcome visitor: death. Now the brilliant inspector Roderick Alleyn must step in to decipher who at the party is capable of cold-blooded murder...
#12
Colour Scheme
1943
Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand's North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel. It was a horrible death—Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed the English exiles he'd hated, the New Zealanders he'd despised or the Maoris he'd insulted. Even the spies he'd thwarted—if he wasn't a spy himself!
#13
Died in the Wool
1945
Ngaio Marsh returns to her New Zealand roots to transplant the classic country house murder mystery to an upland sheep station on South Island—and produces one of her most exotic and intriguing novels. One summer evening in 1942 Flossie Rubrick, MP, one of the most formidable women in New Zealand, goes to her husband's wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech—and disappears. Three weeks later she turns up at an auction—packed inside one of her own bales of wool and very, very dead!
#14
Final Curtain
1947
Troy Alleyn, Inspector Roderick Alleyn's beautiful young wife, is engaged to paint a portrait of Sir Henry Ancred, famed Shakespearean actor and family patriarch, but she senses all is not well in the dreary castle of Ancreton. When old Henry is found dead after a suspicious dinner and an unfortunate family fracas, Troy enlists the impeccable aid of her husband to determine who among a cast of players would have a motive for murder—and the theatrical gift to carry it out.
#15
A Wreath for Rivera
1949
Red-hot jazz meets cold-blooded murder.
When Lord Pastern Bagott takes up with the hot music of Breezy Bellair and his Boys, his disapproving wife Cecile has more than usual to be unhappy about. The band's devastatingly handsome but roguish accordionist, Carlos Rivera, has taken a rather intense and mutual interest in her precious daughter Felicite. So when a bit of strange business goes awry and actually kills him, it's lucky that Inspector Roderick Alleyn is in the audience. Now Alleyn must follow a confusing score that features a chorus of family and friends desperate to hide the truth and perhaps shelter a murderer in their midst.
#16
Night at the Vulcan
1951
A London actor was dying for a star billing...
From the leading lady's liaison to the harassment of an aging juvenile lead-there's never a dull moment, darling, at the Vulcan Theatre. But vanity and hysterics, suspicion and superstition, brandy and jealousy, are upstaged by a death on opening night. Was it really suicide? Or a macabre encore to a long-ago murder in the same backstage room? Scotland Yard's cast of suspects for the final curtain.
#17
Spinsters in Jeopardy
1953
SPINSTERS IN JEOPARDY
#18
Scales of Justice
1955
Of all the books in the Alleyn series, 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, in fact, a trout at his side – everyone is dreadfully upset, of course, but really, just a tad irritated as well: Murder is so awfully messy. Thank gawd that nice Inspector Alleyn – not really one of us, you know, but not terribly wide of the mark – is on hand to clear things up. Though one could wish that he didn’t feel compelled to ask quite so many questions.
#19
Death of a Fool
1957
A ritual dance becomes a murderous mambo...
At the winter solstice, South Mardian's swordsmen weave their blades in an ancient ritual dance. But for one of them, the excitement proves too heady, and his decapitation turns the fertility rite into a pageant of death. Now Inspector Roderick Alleyn must penetrate not only the mysteries of folklore, but the secrets and sins of an eccentric group who include a surly blacksmith, a domineering dowager, and a not-so-simple village idiot.
#20
Singing in the Shrouds
1958
All aboard for murder
The Cape Farewell steams out to sea, carrying a serial strangler who says it with flowers and a little song. Behind, on a fogbound London dock, lies his latest lovely victim; and on board, working undercover to identify him before he strikes again, is Inspector Roderick Alleyn. But-with a collection of neurotic, bombastic, shifty, and passionate passengers at one another's throats-how long can he keep the investigation on course?
#21
False Scent
1959
In a poisonous cloud of spray, the curtain falls on a drama queen.
Little did beloved British actress Mary Bellamy know that she would be done in at her own birthday party-choked by toxic mist from the bottle of "Slaypest," a deadly insecticide. Basking in the glow of her most adoring fans-who all happened to be her most duplicitous enemies-Mary would make her final performance. When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn arrives, he smells a rat amongst the contemptuous collection of theatre types detained at the party, for this case has the unmistakable scent of murder...
#22
Hand in Glove
1962
The April Fool's Day had been a roaring success for all, it seemed - except for poor Mr Cartell who had ended up in the ditch - for ever. Then there was the case of Mr Percival Pyke Period's letter of condolence, sent before the body was found - not to mention the family squabbles. It was a puzzling crime for Superintendent Alleyn
#23
Dead Water
1963
A quirky Roderick Alleyn mystery about faith, greed—and murder. Times are good in the Cornish village of Portcarrow, as hundreds of unfortunates flock to taste the miraculous waters of Pixie Falls. Then Miss Emily Pride inherits the celebrated land on which Portcarrow stands and wants to put an end to the villagers' thriving trade in miracle cures, especially Miss Elspeth Costs' gift shop. But someone puts an end to Miss Cost herself, and Miss Pride's guardian angel, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, finds himself on the spot in both senses of the word...
#24
Killer Dolphin
1966
At the newly restored Dolphin Theatre, murder takes center stage
The once-dilapidated Dolphin Theater, now restored to its former glory, is open again-and all of London is buzzing about its new play, The Glove, inspired by the discovery of a genuine Shakespearean glove. But on one unfortunate evening, the Dolphin opens its doors to the harshest critic of all: death. Now Inspector Roderick Alleyn must find out who stole the scene with a most murderous act.
#25
Clutch of Constables
1968
A classic Ngaio Marsh novel which features blood-curdling murders in the confines of a riverboat, the Zodiac, cruising through Constable country.
’He looks upon the murders that he did in fact perform as tiresome and regrettable necessities,’ reflected Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn on the international crook known as ‘the Jampot’.
But it was Alleyn’s wife Troy who knew ‘the Jampot’ best: she had shared close quarters with him on the tiny pleasure steamer Zodiac on a cruise along the peaceful rivers of ‘Constable country’. And it was she who knew something was badly wrong even before Alleyn was called in to solve the two murders on board…
#26
When in Rome
1970
Death on a Guided Tour
It was April in Rome, and gathered together in the church of San Tommaso in Pallario was the kind of varied group of people that can only meet on a tour. It included a superannuated jetsetter and her junkie nephew, a bad-tempered, ultra-British major, a boisterous Baron and Baroness, and an extremely reticent best-selling author. They were there under the aegis of one Sebastian Mailer, who had promised them a most unconventional tour—a claim no one later disputed, after encountering murder, blackmail and drug-running.
Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, in Rome on a special mission, became involved in the case, and found it one of his most baffling—a case in which every suspect might equally well prove a victim…
(Publisher’s description)
#27
Tied Up In Tinsel
1972
A Christmas pageant turns unholy.
Holed up at Hilary Bill-Tasman's manor estate for Christmas, Troy Alleyn is to paint the man's portrait and, while she's there, view the Druid Christmas pageant. Along with a pack of eccentric guests, Troy enjoys the festivities—until one of the pageant's players mysteriously disappears into the snowy night. Did the hired help—each a paroled murderer from the nearby prison—have a deadly hand in this Christmas conundrum? Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives to join his wife in finding the lost man—and unraveling the glaring truth from the glittering tinsel.
#28
Black As He's Painted
1974
A visiting dignitary in London asks for security—and gets extra help from a clever feline—in a novel starring “the nonpareil among criminal investigators” (The New York Times).
Superintendent Alleyn’s old school chum, nicknamed the “Boomer,” has become the president of the newly emerged African nation of Ng’ombwana, newly emerged in the wake of colonialism. Old school ties being what they are, his friend—making an official visit to London—insists that Alleyn handle his security, rather than Her Majesty’s Special Branch. The Special Branch is not best pleased about this, as the Boomer is known to have some very deadly enemies, and the threats only increase when the Ng’ombwanan ambassador is killed. Happily for the Boomer, not only is Alleyn up to the task, but he is assisted by a rescued cat who proves extremely adept at finding clues . . .
#29
Last Ditch
1976
Ricky Alleyn, son of the renowned police detective Roderick Alleyn, has taken himself to a secluded island to write a novel. Or think about writing a novel. Or look for distractions so he can avoid writing a novel.
The distractions abound, mostly in the form of colorful local characters, so all is beer and skittles until Ricky stumbles across a murder and then gets himself kidnapped. Naturally his father rushes to the island to save the day . . .
#30
A Grave Mistake
1978
A spa stay turns into a homicidal holiday...
A bit snobbish and a trifle high-strung, Sybil Foster prides herself on owning the finest estate in Upper Quintern and hiring the best gardener. In fact, she is rapturous over the new asparagus beds when a visit from her unwelcome stepson sends her scurrying to a chic spa for a rest cure, a liaison with the spa's director...and an apparent suicide. Her autopsy holds one surprise, a secret drawer a second. And Inspector Roderick Alleyn, C.I.D., digging about Upper Quintern, may unearth still a third...deeply buried motive for murder.
#31
Photo Finish
1980
MURDER IN HIGH C...
A persistent paparazzi has hounded operatic soprano Isabella Sommita until her nerves are at the breaking point. Now her millionaire boyfriend has whisked her to a New Zealand island to recover. There she plans a performance of an aria written just for her—by her secret young lover, who, along with a bevy of envious celebrities, is also on the island. It's the perfect set-up for grand opera—wild passions...and bloody murder. And when the great singer is found dead, a photo on her bosom, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn must find out who did the diva in...
#32
Light Thickens
1982
"Is this a dagger which I see before me..."
Four murders. Three witches. A fiendish lady. A homicidal husband. A ghost. No wonder Macbeth is considered such bad luck by theatre people that they won't mention its name out loud. But the new London production of "the Scottish play" promises to be a smash until gruesome pranks begin plaguing rehearsals. And when the last act ends in real-life tragedy, Chief Superintendent Alleyn takes center stage-uncovering a heartbreaking secret, murderous jealousy, and a dark, desperate reason for "murder for foul"...
#33
Money in the Morgue
2018
Roderick Alleyn is back in this unique crime novel begun by Ngaio Marsh during the Second World War and now completed by Stella Duffy.
It’s business as usual for Mr Glossop as he does his regular round delivering wages to government buildings scattered across New Zealand’s lonely Canterbury plains. But when his car breaks down he is stranded for the night at the isolated Mount Seager Hospital, with the telephone lines down, a storm on its way and the nearby river about to burst its banks.
Trapped with him at Mount Seager are a group of quarantined soldiers with a serious case of cabin fever, three young employees embroiled in a tense love triangle, a dying elderly man, an elusive patient whose origins remain a mystery … and a potential killer.
When the payroll disappears from a locked safe and the hospital’s death toll starts to rise faster than normal, can the appearance of an English detective working in counterespionage be just a lucky coincidence – or is something more sinister afoot?
Author
Ngaio Marsh
Author · 48 books
Dame Ngaio Marsh, born Edith Ngaio Marsh, was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre director. There is some uncertainty over her birth date as her father neglected to register her birth until 1900, but she was born in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. Of all the "Great Ladies" of the English mystery's golden age, including Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh alone survived to publish in the 1980s. Over a fifty-year span, from 1932 to 1982, Marsh wrote thirty-two classic English detective novels, which gained international acclaim. She did not always see herself as a writer, but first planned a career as a painter. Marsh's first novel, A MAN LAY DEAD (1934), which she wrote in London in 1931-32, introduced the detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn: a combination of Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and a realistically depicted police official at work. Throughout the 1930s Marsh painted occasionally, wrote plays for local repertory societies in New Zealand, and published detective novels. In 1937 Marsh went to England for a period. Before going back to her home country, she spent six months travelling about Europe. All her novels feature British CID detective Roderick Alleyn. Several novels feature Marsh's other loves, the theatre and painting. A number are set around theatrical productions (Enter a Murderer, Vintage Murder, Overture to Death, Opening Night, Death at the Dolphin, and Light Thickens), and two others are about actors off stage (Final Curtain and False Scent). Her short story "'I Can Find My Way Out" is also set around a theatrical production and is the earlier "Jupiter case" referred to in Opening Night. Alleyn marries a painter, Agatha Troy, whom he meets during an investigation (Artists in Crime), and who features in several later novels. Series: * Roderick Alleyn
