Swing, Brother, Swing (Book review)

Ngaio Marsh Swing, Brother, Swing (1949) Lord Pastern, an eccentric peer, develops a passion for drumming and persuades Breezy Bellair to let him play with his band. His stepdaughter Felicity falls for Rivera, the oleaginous accordion player and drug dealer. Rivera is murdered during a performance at the Metronome in full view of the audience, which includes the peer’s family, all of whom detest Rivera. Alleyn and Troy happen to be present also, which makes Alleyn a witness in his own case.
      The puzzle is more ingenious than usual, mostly because Lord Pastern, an egocentric clever idiot, attempts to misdirect the police: he wants to produce the correct solution when the police have given up.
     But as usual it’s the characters that fascinate. I came across an interview on New Zealand radio, in which Marsh said she started composition of her crime stories with a group of people, not a puzzle. She claimed not to be very good at inventing a puzzles, an observation confirmed by some of her readers. Her focus on character explains the charm of her books, at least for me. The Golden Age of detective fiction is stuffed with books and stories that are little more than abstract puzzles, like word problems concocted for algebra class, but with the characters given names rather than letters.
     Marsh is very good at using dialogue to show how people can be their own worst enemies, frustrating their chances at happiness, delaying the police in their inquiries, and causing present hurts and preventing past hurts from healing. It’s odd but true that Alleyn and Fox are usually the most colourless and least imposing characters in the room. This follows partly from their technique of cool but ruthless pursuit of facts, and partly from their role as investigators. We want to know the facts, but we also want to know about the investigator. This creates a tension, a division of interest, which creates a narrative problem. Marsh solves it by asides, scenes interposed that show Alleyn and Troy, or Alleyn and Fox alone. These advance the back story: we find out that Troy is pregnant, and that Fox will be godfather.
     One of Marsh’s best. ***½