Boomps-A-Daisy Timing Solves the Crime (Death and the Dancing Footman, Ngaio Marsh 1942)

Ngaio Marsh. Death and the Dancing Footman (1942). A re-read, and more enjoyable because this time I could see how Marsh constructed the puzzle and developed characters just enough to engage our sympathies. She’s good at using stereotypes for ambience. This novel is now an historic document showing what the readers of the time expected by way of comic relief, and what they took for granted about the social fabric of their time.

The puzzle centres on a radio used to provide an alibi. Times are of the essence, and the footman’s dance, executed when he hears a popular song on the radio, crystallises the timetable. A suitable mix of motives, past griefs and conflicts, and present evils complicates Alleyn’s work, and provides the narrative texture that satisfies the reader. Me, in this case.

Recommended. ***

The Singing Detective (1988)

 

 Dennis Potter. The Singing Detective. (1988) Script of the TV series, which we enjoyed very much. Reading this, I realised how much I’d forgotten or missed. The detective figures in the fictions of a writer hospitalised for severe psoriasis. There are both fictional and real-life mysteries, the central one being how and why they intersect in the writer’s memory, and how real life translates into fiction. Potter layers present and past, memory and reality, songs and stories, family and social connections, acceptance and refusal of the truth (such as it is). The TV series is available online (recommended). I found this book resolved some puzzles, but mostly showed me how little I had absorbed the first time round.

Recommended. ***

Wagontrain Shenanigans (Westward the Tide, L'Amour 1977)

 Louis L’Amour. Westward the Tide. (1977) Matt Bardoul signs on with a wagon train despite whispered warnings conveyed to him in the darkened livery stable. One of the two main organisers of the trek has evil designs on the settlers and their wealth. There’s betrayals and fistfights and gunfights and such, but in the end Matt defeats the enemy and wins the girl. All very satisfactory.

L’Amour allows himself some extended ruminations on the history of settlement in the West. Like many commentators of the time, he thought of the West as empty country, and idealises the hardy pioneers who created a productive agricultural paradise out of windswept prairie. The story and these ruminations alternate, which makes for an odd experience: I wanted him to get on with it, and untangle the plot knots. Not his best work. **

Repressed Spinsters (Overture to Death, Marsh 1939)

Ngaio Marsh. Overture to Death (1939) Winton St Giles parish hall needs a new piano. The fundraiser will be a play. The cast comprises the squire Jocelyn Jerningham, his son Henry, his spinster cousin Eleanor Prentice, the Vicar’s daughter Diana Copeland, Doctor Templett and his mistress Selia Ross, and the other spinster, Idris Campanula. She’s the victim, shot through head when she stomps on the soft pedal on the old piano, which, via a series of pulleys and twine, pulls the trigger of a gun wedged into the old instrument for just this purpose.

Alleyn and crew have to pick their way though the usual mix of relevant and irrelevant information. The novel is really a study of Freudian repressions. The two spinsters loathe each other, but are united in their fascination with and censure of other people’s sex lives. Both have designs on the vicar. And so on. Marsh is very good at depicting hypocrisy and other evils. This makes her books more than mere puzzles to be solved.

Recommended. *** 

Unpleasant Barrister Dies in a Pub (Death at the Bar, Marsh 1939)

 Ngaio Marsh. Death At the Bar (1939) A rather unpleasant, overbearing King’s Counsel is the victim. The weapon is a poisoned dart set up in the bar of the Plume of Feathers, hence the title. The poison apparently had to travel from a locked cabinet to the dartboard in full view of a roomful of people. The impossibility creates the puzzle. The usual complications of fraught personal relationships, complicated family histories, and so on, further muddled by a political movement of dubious utility, create the maze that Alleyn must navigate.

I enjoyed this reread, mostly because Marsh’s novels are contemporary, which has now made them historical fictions, which spells nostalgia for old fogies like me. Post-war England into the mid-1950s was not so very different from the 1930s and 40s. It was the 1960s that transformed England, and by that time I was in Canada. A good read, recommended for any Marsh fan or for the classic puzzle whodunit. ***

Three more Ngaio Marsh rereads: Death in Ecstasy, Vintage Murder, Death in a White Tie

This copy of Death in Ecstasy was printed in 1943, and contains a note requesting the reader to forward it to the armed forces for the entertainment of the troops

Ngaio Marsh. Death in Ecstasy (1936), Vintage Murder (1936), Death in A White Tie (1938). More re-reads. Marsh has become a steady seller, hence the three novels published in 1936.

Between Vintage Murder and Death in a White Tie, Alleyn has met Agatha Troy and solved a rather grisly murder perpetrated at her studio summer school (Artists in Crime). She has a walk-on part in Death in a White Tie, which ends with her accepting Alleyn’s proposal. There’s a good deal of sentimental back story about their courtship and Alleyn’s mama wishing Troy were her daughter-in-law, etc. Fox has stiffened into a cardboard cut-out; in later books, Marsh shows us a good deal more of Alleyn’s team, but they never become fully realised characters. The murder of Lord ‘Bunchy’ Robert Gospell following a debutante ball is nicely set up and solved, and Marsh shows once again that she has a sharp eye for human folly. She’s really a satirist; her depiction of the Alleyn-Troy romance is rather awkward. In later books, she shows them as a married couple comfortable with each other and supporting each other’s careers.

I enjoyed these re-reads. I don’t try to puzzle out the solution, I prefer to watch the ‘tecs doing their stuff. If I get a sense of whodunit (or have a vague memory from a previous read), I still want to see how Alleyn and Fox come to their conclusions. You may want to shut the book where Alleyn and Fox discuss the case, and work out the solution yourself. I don’t.

I especially liked Marsh’s evocation of a touring theatre company’s life on the road (railroad) in Vintage Murder.

Recommended to all fans of the classic English murder mystery. ***

Three by Ngaio Marsh: A May Dead, Enter a Murderer, The Nursing Home Murders

Ngaio Marsh. A Man Lay Dead (1935) Ngaio Marsh. Enter A Murderer (1935) Ngaio Marsh. The Nursing Home Murders (1936) Three re-reads. Entertaining, and revealing: Marsh’s narrative skills improve over these first three Alleyn novels. The novels are also excellent data for understanding the social  milieu of the 1930s: prejudices that to us seem glaringly obvious are taken for granted and even approved as common sense. There’s increasing awareness of caste and class differences, but they don’t yet grate on people’s nerves. Freudian psychology has its day, and figures in the characters’ psychology. It may even supply motives, or make them intelligible. “Modern” means current and cutting edge fashion, as it always does. Many of the objects used to signal culture and hence character are now coveted antiques.

I enjoyed these rereads. **½ and ***

The age of these books has made them accurate historical novels.