Roderick Alleyn Mysteries
32 primary works • 45 total works
Book 21
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...
Book 22
Book 23
Book 24
The restoration of a bombed-out London theatre ends in violent death - and one of Marsh's most vivid and dramatic novels
When the bombed-out Dolphin Theatre is given to Peregrine Jay by a mysterious wealthy patron, he is overjoyed. And when the mysterious oil millionaire also gives him a glove that belonged to Shakespeare, Peregrine displays it in the dockside theatre and writes a successful play about it.
But then a murder takes place, a boy is attacked, the glove is stolen. Could it be that oil and water don't mix? Inspector Roderick Alleyn is determined to find out...
Book 25
Book 26
Book 27
Book 28
One of Ngaio Marsh's most popular novels, this time featuring one of her best creations - Lucy Lockett, the crime-solving cat.
When the exuberant president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old school mate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise.
Consequently, on the night of the embassy's reception the house and grounds are stiff with police. Nevertheless, an assassin does strike, and Alleyn finds he has no shortage of help, from Special Branch to a tribal court - and a small black cat named Lucy Lockett who out-detects them all...
Book 29
Young Ricky Alleyn has come to the picturesque fishing village of Deep Cove to write. Through the sleepy little town offers few diversions, Ricky manages to find the most distracting one of all: murder. For in a muddy ditch, he sees a dead equestrienne whose last leap was anything but an accident. And when Ricky himself disappears, the case becomes a horse of a different color for his father, Inspector Roderick Alleyn.
Book 30
Another classic Ngaio Marsh novel.
At first it looked as if Sybil Foster had intentionally left the world: with two husbands dead, a daughter marrying the wrong man and - it later appeared - a debilitating disease, it was no wonder she took her own life.
But no one believed she was the type - especially Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn. For the field was ripe with unfortunate engagements - one of them a very grave mistake...
Book 31
Book 32
The complete series of Ngaio Marsh reissues concludes with the re-publication of this 20th anniversary edition of this, her final novel.
Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of Macbeth, the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck.
But one night the claymore swings and the dummy's head is more than real: murder behind the scene.
Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience...
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the fourth volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries
SURFEIT OF LAMPREYS
The Lampreys were a peculiar family. They entertained their guests with charades - like rich Uncle Gabriel, who was always such a bore. The Lampreys thought if they jollied him up he would bail them out of poverty again. But Uncle Gabriel meets a violent end, and Chief Inspector Alleyn had to work out which of them killed him…
DEATH AND THE DANCING FOOTMAN
It begins as an entertainment: eight people, many of them adversaries, gathered for a winter weekend by a host with a love for theatre. It ends in snowbound disaster. Everyone has an alibi - and a motive as well. But Roderick Alleyn soon realizes that it all hangs on Thomas, the dancing footman…
COLOUR SCHEME
It was a horrible death -lured into a pool of boiling mud and left to die. Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for enemy agents, knows that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he'd hated, the New Zealanders he'd despised, or the Maoris he'd insulted. Even the spies he'd thwarted…
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the third volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.
DEATH IN A WHITE TIE
The season has begun. Débutantes and chaperones are planning their gala dinners - and the blackmailer is planning strategies to stalk his next victim. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knows that something is up and has already planted his friend Lord Gospell at the dinner. But someone else has got there first…
OVERTURE TO DEATH
It was planned as an act of charity: a new piano for the parish hall, and an amusing evening's entertainment to finance the gift. But all is doomed when Miss Campanula sits down to play. A chord is struck, a shot rings out, and Miss Campanula is dead.
it seems to be a case of sinister infatuation for Roderick Alleyn…
DEATH AT THE BAR
A midsummer evening - darts night at The Plume of Feathers, a traditional Devonshire public house. A distinguished painter, a celebrated actor, a woman graduate, a plump lady from County Clare and a local farmer all play their parts in a fatal experiment which calls for the investigative expertise of Inspector Alleyn…
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the first volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.
A MAN LAY DEAD
Sir Hubert Handesley's extravagant weekend house-parties are deservedly famous for his exciting Murder Game. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have skilful alibis - so Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to figure out the whodunit…
ENTER A MURDERER
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…
THE NURSING HOME MURDER
A Harley Street surgeon and his attractive nurse are almost too nervous to operate. Their patient is the Home Secretary - and they both have very good personal reasons to want him dead. The operation is a complete success - but he dies within hours, and Inspector Alleyn must find out why…
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the second volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.
DEATH IN ECSTASY
Who slipped cyanide into the ceremonial wine of ecstasy at the House of the Sacred Flame? The other initiates and the High Priest claim to be above earthly passions. But Roderick Alleyn discovers that the victim had provoked lust and jealousy, and he suspects that more evil still lurks behind the Sign of the Sacred Flame…
VINTAGE MURDER
New Zealand theatrical manager Alfred Meyer is planning a surprise for his wife's birthday - a jeroboam of champagne descending gently onto the stage after the performance. But, as Roderick Alleyn witnesses, something goes horribly wrong. Is the death the product of Maori superstitions - or something more down to earth?
ARTISTS IN CRIME
It starts as an art exercise - the knife under the drape, the pose outlined in chalk. But when Agatha Troy returns to her class, the scene has been re-enacted: the model is dead, fixed in the most dramatic pose Troy has ever seen. It's a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn. Is the woman he loves really a murderess…?
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the seventh volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries
OFF WITH HIS HEAD
When the pesky Anna Bünz arrives at Mardian to investigate local folk-dancing, she quickly antagonizes the villagers. But Mrs Bünz is not the only source of friction. When the sword dancers' traditional mock beheading of the Winter Solstice becomes horribly real, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn finds himself faced with a complex case of gruesome proportions…
SINGING IN THE SHROUDS
On a cold February London night, the police find a corpse on the quayside, her body covered with flower petals and pearls. The killer, who walked away singing, is known to be one of nine passengers on the cargo ship, Cape Farewell. Superintendent Roderick Alleyn joins the ship on the most difficult assignment of his career…
FALSE SCENT
Mary Bellamy, darling of the London stage, holds a 50th birthday party, a gala for everyone who loves her and fears her power. Then someone uses a deadly insect spray on Mary instead of the azaleas. The suspects, all very theatrically, are playing the part of mourners. Superintendent Alleyn has to find out which one played the murderer…
The ninth volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.
CLUTCH OF CONSTABLES
According to Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, 'the Jampot' is an international crook who regards murder as 'tiresome and regrettable necessities'. But Alleyn's wife Troy has shared close quarters with the Jampot on a pleasure cruise along the peaceful rivers of 'Constable country' and knows something is badly wrong even before the two murders on board…
WHEN IN ROME
When their guide disappears mysteriously in the depths of a Roman Basilica, the members of Sebastian Mailer's tour group seem strangely unperturbed. But when a body is discovered in an Etruscan sarcophagus, Superintendent Alleyn, in Rome on the trail of an international drug racket, is very much concerned…
TIED UP IN TINSEL
When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected - only suspicion falls not on the staff but on the unimpeachably respectable guests. When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn returns unexpectedly from a trip overseas, it is to find his beloved wife in the thick of an intriguing mystery…
Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the fifth volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.
DIED IN THE WOOL
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…
FINAL CURTAIN
Just as Agatha Troy, the world famous painter, completes her portrait of Sir Henry Ancred, the Grand Old Man of the stage, the old actor dies. The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in – in the person of Troy's long-absent husband, Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn…
SWING, BROTHER, SWING
The music rises to a climax: Lord Pastern aims his revolver and fires. The figure in the spotlight falls – and the coup-de-théatre has become murder… Has the eccentric peer let hatred of his future son-in-law go too far? Or will a tangle of jealousies and blackmail reveal to Inspector Alleyn an altogether different murderer?