Two more by Marsh

Ngaio Marsh. Death In A White Tie (1938) It’s The Season. Lord Robert “Bunchy” Gospell, a friend of Alleyn and many other people, is found dead in a taxi after a specially successful coming out party. He has been keeping eyes and ears open to discover what he can of a blackmail racket. That was the motive for killing him. The murderer has ben very, very clever, but his eye and taste for elegant Renaissance objets do him in. That, and very careful tracing of the times different people were able to overhear Bunchy’s call to Alleyn.
     Bunchy at one point reflects on the cruelty of dragging young women through the debutante season, of placing them so blatantly on show for the marriage market. He’s a kind man, and  always dances with some of the wallflowers. Troy was at the ball, so Alleyn can plead his suit. Marsh is very good on the social and psychological effects of the Season. She flubs Alleyn’s love story. She’s trying for some kind of noble renunciation in case Troy rejects Alleyn, I think, and it doesn’t work. The glimpses in the later books of the Alleyns as a married couple and parents are more convincing.
     There’s some casual and silly racism here, too. Definitely of the times, and a reminder that current attempts to present a less offensive version of the past don’t work well. Marsh usually expresses irritation and more at racist attitudes, so its presence here jars.
     Nevertheless, a good puzzle, and a pretty good portrait of the upper classes behaving and misbehaving. ***

Ngaio Marsh. Death at the Bar (1939) Three friends arrive for their annual holiday in Ottercombe, an isolated fishing village with a cosy pub. One of them, a vain barrister, prods a recently a established local man. Later, the barrister dies of cyanide poisoning. The several other people with reason to dislike him create the maze that Alleyn and Fox must traverse. All’s well that ends well, including the obligatory romance. A nicely done puzzle, as usual, and nicely done semi-satiric portraits of te common vices of vanity, lechery, jealousy, envy, and so on. I’m still on a Marsh binge, and enjoyed rereading this novel. ***