Opening Night (Book review)

     Ngaio Marsh Opening Night (1951) The old Unicorn theatre has been reborn as the Vulcan. We’re back in familiar territory: the great actor-manager, the leading lady, a number of skilled actors doing a professional job of the secondary characters, assorted theatre staff and stage crew, and the look, sound, and smell of a working theatre. The twist: a New Zealander, remote cousin of the actor-manager, ends up at the theatre after failing to get any work anywhere else. She starts as the star’s dresser, then becomes the understudy of the crucial second lead, played by the niece of the star’s husband, who plays the hero’s antagonist, and is the victim of a murder dressed up as suicide. There are assorted other relationships, past, present, and developing, that interfere with the investigation of the crime, but Alleyn and Fox and the rest of the team solve the riddle in a night of hard work.
     This book feels painted by the numbers: the puzzle takes center stage, in part because it echoes the earlier murder. Marsh is too good a writer to give us merely 2D characters, but most of this lot are only 2½D. **