Three by Ngaio Marsh: A Man Lay 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.