Artists in Crime

By Ngaio Marsh

The setting is 1930s Britain. Inspector Alleyn is on his way home from the Far East when he meets a talented female artist. He admires her work, she is not receptive.
Back home in Britain, he is called to investigate a murder at a country estate that just happens to be the home of the standoffish artist, Agatha Troy.
Miss Troy is running an artist colony out of her home and several artists are working together on their projects. The current project is a nude study featuring a young woman model. This woman is the victim  that has sent Alleyn to the scene. She was stabbed to death while posing for the artists, by means of an unlikely trap.
So Alleyn has to interview this collection of free spirits and try to determine which one of them had it in for the dead woman. It turms out the woman was a blackmailer with multiple victims among the group. Alleyn has to figure out who had enough and decided to finish her off to shut her mouth. But first he has to get past the red herring set up to point the police in the wrong direction. And keep his mind on his work while falling for the aloof and elusive Agatha Troy.

This was an okay read. I did find the police interviews with the suspects rather dull after a bit. And I wasn't surprised when the main suspect turned up dead. But the identity of the real killer came as a bit of a surprise, although a person cleverer than me probably saw the clues right away.

I do have a quibble with the story. One of the plot details features aspirin. The story implies that taking aspirin is similar to taking a sleeping pill. Now, I don't know about the aspirin they had in Britain in the 1930s, but aspirin here in the States is merely a pain reliever and does not induce sleep.
My copy of the book was published in 1980, but the original novel dates from the 1930s. I am wondering if the author used some other pain reliever common in Britain with the soporific side effect mentioned in the story and the publishers here changed it to aspirin, which would be more familiar to an American audience. Because it is hard to believe that a woman as smart as Ngaio Marsh would make such an obvious mistake about the effects of aspirin.

Clutch of Constables

By Ngaio Marsh

Book number 25 in the Roderick Alleyn series, this one stars Mrs. Alleyn, who has just finished an art show featuring her work and, on impulse, takes a several day river cruise. But what starts out as an innocent cruise turns deadly when one of the passengers is killed and tossed in the river.

This was an OK story. It switches between the cruise, Mrs. Alleyn's letters to her policeman husband and her husband's after-the-fact lecture to his fellow police. That was one of the things I didn't care for in the story, where Alleyn reveals important details of the case to his fellow cops but the reader is only told it is an important detail, but not what the actual detail is. Of course, the author doesn't want to give away too much too soon, but I found it kind of annoying.

NIght at the Vulcan

By Ngaio Marsh

Martyn Tarne is a young actress recently arrived in England from New Zealand. On her arrival her travelers checks were stolen and, since it will be a few weeks before she can get her money refunded, she needs to find work quickly. After making the rounds looking for acting jobs, she arrives at the Vulcan theater only to find she is too late. Despairing and loitering in the theater to rest her weary feet, she overhears that the leading lady's dresser has taken suddenly ill and a replacement dresser is needed immediately. Martyn steps forward to apply for the job since being a dresser is better than sleeping on a bench in the park.
All is not well with the play that is to open in a couple days. The main problem is the young actress hired to play a small but significant part in the play. But the part is beyond her limited acting skills. Her uncle got her the part and is insisting on her staying in the play against everyone else's objections and this is causing a lot of tension.
When the other actors meet Martyn they are all astonished at how much she looks like the leading man, Adam Poole. And since the part taken by the other young actress calls for her to resemble Adam Poole's character and when they all find out that Martyn is also an experienced actress, the push is on to replace the other actress. But the uncle won't back down and Martyn is signed on as understudy to the other actress, who has hysterics on opening night, giving Martyn her chance at the role.
However the uncle has been making threats and he ends up dead before the night is through. Although his death was an apparent suicide, when the police arrive, a little investigation reveals he was murdered. Since he was a rather unpleasant person, there are lots of suspects to choose from.

This book grabbed me from the first page. Martyn's predicament and the timely arrival of a job and the details of life in a theater all hit the perfect note. Reading this book I could practically smell the greasepaint, it was a real trip into a strange world, full of interesting characters, with just enough detail to interest and yet not overwhelm or bore. I really enjoyed the book.