Fri 11 Sep 2020
NGAIO MARSH – Photo Finish. Roderick Alleyn #31. Little Brown, hardcover, 1980. Jove, paperback, 1981. Reprinted several more times.
[Speaking of old pros still at work, as I was in my review of a recent book by Richard Lockridge], the second half of that description goes double for Ngaio Marsh’s latest work. Once again on hand to solve the mystery is her long-time leading character, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard.
Alleyn’s first appearance, then as a Detective Inspector, was – would you believe? – in 1934. This is his and Dame Ngaio’s thirty-first collaboration together.
And, coincidentally, the theatre has played a large part in many of their cases as well. The connection this time is not as strong as it is in the Lockridge book, but there is one here as well. The scene is a remote hideaway in New Zealand, where a famous opera singer nicknamed La Sommita has commissioned an embarrassingly bad opera to be performed, and naturally with herself in the leading role.
Also involved is a photographer specializing. in taking extremely candid shots for the more sensationalistic newspapers. There is a bare hint of illicit drug-dealing. What the detective work depends most greatly upon, however, is the mystery that surrounds the keys to La Sommita’ s locked bedroom after she is murdered.
Alleyn has no Watson along to bounce his theories off this time – his wife Troy having evidently long ago refused to go along with the idea – and so some of his deductions are rather abruptly announced, on what occasionally seems to be mighty little evidence.
Marsh’s writing style lacks some of the sprightly sparkle to be found in Lockridge’s work, but the surprise she gives us at the end is greater. This is only the latest in a long series of plots designed over the yearns by the reigning Queen of Mystery to catch the unwary reader. She succeeds again.
[UPDATE.] There were to be only two more cases for Roderick Alleyn to solve, and one may or may not count:
32. Light Thickens (1982)
33. Money in the Morgue (2018) (with Stella Duffy)
September 12th, 2020 at 6:05 pm
Marsh remains a favorite. Even late in her career, past her best, she still turned out some surprisingly good books, never as brilliant as Allingham or Christie, she had fewer misfires, certainly than Christie (no PASSENGER TO FRANKFURT).
Even on veritable cruise control she still had rabbits to pull from her hat.
September 12th, 2020 at 6:19 pm
She was consistently good, but like you, I can’t think of any of her books as being singularly better than any of others. Thinking back, I can remember story lines, but I’ll bet that if I started to read one I’ve read before, I would have no idea who did it.
September 12th, 2020 at 8:52 pm
DIED IN THE WOOL still stands out along with WREATH FOR RIVERA, DEAD WATER, SPINSTERS IN JEOPARDY, and one of her last books WHEN IN ROME, but in general I agree. I think of Marsh in terms of her entire output where with Allingham and Christie it is more often in terms of particular titles.
September 12th, 2020 at 10:00 pm
Perhaps because it was the first Marsh I ever read, DIED IN THE WOOL is a favorite of mine as well, standing out in my mind perhaps because of the way the victim’s body was disposed of. But if I were to start to read it again, I’d have no other memory of the story line nor, as I said above, no idea who did it.
“I think of Marsh in terms of her entire output where with Allingham and Christie it is more often in terms of particular titles.” I couldn’t agree more.