A Man Lay Dead (Roderick Alleyn Mysteries, #1) (Medical Intelligence Unit (Unnumbered))

by Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh's classic first novel, which introduced Inspector Alleyn and set Ngaio Marsh on the path to international recognition. Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house-parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time there is a real corpse, with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have had time to concoct skilful alibis -- and it is Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn who has to try and figure out whodunit...

• ISBN10: 000231682X
• ISBN13: 9780002316828
• Publish Date: October 1981 (first published 27 August 1970)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 14 September 1995
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins Crime
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 176
• Language: English

Reviews

[Aidan Brack (Mysteries Ahoy)]

This is a work that feels light, amusing but rather insubstantial. I liked Alleyn but don’t feel that I really know who he is and certainly was not left with a burning desire to rush off and read the other thirty-two titles in this series.

Read my full review at Mysteries Ahoy!

[brokentune]

Alleyn looked at him with a curious air of compassion.
‘Not even yet?’ he said.
‘Whose were the prints?’
‘That I am not going to tell you. Oh, believe me, Bathgate, not out of any desire to figure as the mysterious omnipotent detective. That would be impossibly vulgar. No. I am not telling you because there is still that bit of my brains that cannot quite accept the QED of the theorem.

Well, that was one of the silliest GA detective stories I have read. Not bad or horrible or totally off-putting, but entirely implausible. So, implausible that I even want to call it "cute".
So, when Alleyn stated (see quote above) that the QED had not been established, yet, I may have laughed out loud. I may also have laughed again at the end of the book.

I am glad I have read A Man Lay Dead after having already another of Marsh's books, because I already know that Marsh can write a splendid mystery. It's just that A Man Lay Dead is not it.

Now that this first book is out of the way, I look forward to the rest of the series, tho.