Artists in Crime & Death in a White Tie (2 Book Reviews)

Ngaio Marsh Artists in Crime (1937. The book in which Alleyn meets the painter Agatha Troy. They first meet on a ship leaving Suva, when Alleyn is returning from his convalescent excursion to New Zealand (Vintage Murder). From here on in, most of the Alleyn novels advance their story. Marsh was one of the first novelists to frame her puzzles in an ongoing saga of her hero’s personal life. The murder is especially nasty, the solution to the puzzle depends on careful analysis of times and distances, and of course Fox and the crew do their stuff with admirable professionalism. Marsh is a master of suggesting the tediousness of police routine without actually describing it in any detail.
     Marsh is clearly confident about her market now. The book has more scope than the first three or four, Marsh uses the background (an artist’s workshop run by Troy) as an occasion for acute comments on art, creativity, and the public image of artist as outsider. She clearly had artist friends and acquaintances; her views (such as can be inferred) feel supported by careful thought.
     I’m on a Marsh binge, and am reading a book every two days or so. So far, I don’t feel glutted. ***

     Ngaio Marsh Death in a White Tie (1938) Marsh set this story in Alleyn’s milieu of gentry and
aristocracy. It’s the Season, and Lord Robert Gospell (Bunchy), a good friend of Alleyn’s, has been asked to keep his eyes and ears open for information about a blackmailer. He’s murdered, but Alleyn and Fox manage to wind up the case in just over two days (and by foregoing sleep). Since many of the cast are Alleyn’s friends and acquaintances, we get Marsh’s take on this stratum of society, and she has some mild satirical fun with them. In some ways, the murder investigation is merely a prop to hang the story on.
     Agatha Troy is also present, playing a minor role as friend and confidante of one of the blackmail victims, and Marsh advances the Alleyn-Troy love story to the point where they declare their love for each other. Marsh may have decided to involve Alleyn in love and eventually marriage because Sayers had safely married off Wimsey the year before and had a great success with Busman’s Honeymoon. The courtship sounds somewhat stilted: Marsh was not a writer of Romances. In fact, Alleyn alludes to such “false novels” when he refers to their meeting on board ship at Suva (Artists in Crime). Her portrayal of Alleyn and Troy as a married couple in the later novels is more successful.
     One of the pleasures of Marsh’s books is her characters. She of course trades in stereotypes, as all writers of entertainment fiction must do, but she varies them enough, and uses Alleyn as a commentator on them well enough, that they seem, for the brief hour that they strut and fret upon the stage, to be real people. Another winner, even if the Troy-Alleyn love story feels a bit grafted on. ***