Tue 1 Apr 2008
NGAIO MARSH – Spinsters in Jeopardy
St. Martin’s, paperback reprint; 1st printing, November 1998. First edition (UK): Collins Crime Club, 1954. First edition (US): Little, Brown & Co., 1953. Digest paperback: Mercury Press, 1955, as The Bride of Death (abridged). Other paperback reprints: Berkley, 1961, and Jove, 1980, each with several followup printings.
Among the list of mystery authors who are considered as being among the best at what they did or currently do, Ngaio Marsh is the one I’ve perhaps most neglected. Before reading Spinsters in Jeopardy over these past few evenings, I have to confess that I’d read no more than two of her mystery novels, totaling 32 in all, not a very high percentage. In all 32 of her mysteries was Inspector (later Superintendent) Roderick Alleyn, whose career at Scotland Yard lasted from 1934 (A Man Lay Dead) to 1982 (Light Thickens), quite a long time in anyone’s book.
This particular edition, the one recently published by St. Martin’s, was part of quite a publishing feat, and they should be commended for it. Back in the late 90s, St. Martin’s put out all 32 novels with uniform covers and in chronological order. (If only someone would do they same for other authors I (or you) could think of, but as far as I’m concerned, Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe books come to mind first, now that Bantam seems to have let them drop.)
But to return to Ngaio Marsh and me, I don’t know why it is that I’ve not read her work any more often than I have. I’ve read a lot of Agatha Christie, for example, and Marsh seems to have been Christie with personality, someone may have said, or if they didn’t, maybe they should have. For me, Marsh has been one of those authors whose work has always been available, so perhaps there hasn’t been any urgency in picking one of her books up to read.
Unfortunately, Spinsters in Jeopardy wasn’t the first one I should have picked up to read in quite a while, since I don’t believe that it’s in any way typical of Marsh’s other mysteries. It’s a thriller, first of all, and not a detective story, even though Inspector Alleyn is in it, and so’s his wife, the former Agatha Troy, the famous artist he’d met and wooed in previous adventures, along with their precocious six-year-old son Ricky.
All three are in France, in part on a vacation trip to meet Troy’s cousin, whom she’s never met; and in part business, as Alleyn has been assigned an undercover liaison job with the French authorities trying to crack down on a narcotics gang operating in the very same area.
A bad idea — using his family as cover on a criminal assignment, that is. Alleyn is required to assist on an emrgency appendectomy operation for a woman who had been on the same train they were on, in the heart of the enemy’s strong stronghold, the Château de la Chévre d’Argent. Ricky is kidnapped and luckily found, but a book in which not only drugs but a vicious religio-erotic racket is the central focus is probably not a book for a young lad to be in anyway.
Ngaio Marsh does manage to make the scenes in which Ricky appears as light-hearted as possible, mitigating against that particular discomfort, but the rest of the occult-based plot, with its mystical (and apparently) deadly rituals, is not one that’s designed to lead to any sense of ease on the reader’s part. Not that there’s anything wrong with mystical rituals, of course, but there didn’t seem to be any need to witness them as far as Alleyn does, which is to nearly their conclusion. Not in a detective mystery, which once again I remind you, this one was not, except at the very end, when it was all but too late.
As a thriller, there are simply too many coincidences to contemplate, and the villains, as successful as they are, are simply too dumb to survive, especially once Alleyn’s ire is fully aroused and he’s well on their trail. All in all, although not without some interest, this is not one of Marsh’s best books, I’m sure.

April 1st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
If you want a prime example of Marsh at her best as a writer of detective novels, then maybe “A Clutch of Constables” is a better place to start. Troy is there too, but the plotting is much more solid (and orthodox) and Marsh plays delightfully cunning tricks on the reader.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Thanks, Xavier. Maybe after thinking about it some more, I won’t be quite so disappointed with the book I just reviewed, but any mystery with “delightfully cunning tricks on the reader” is going to supply a lot more of what I expected Spinsters to have when I picked it up to read.
— Steve
April 1st, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Marsh is a terribly uneven writer.
Among her better books:
Death in a White Tie
Death of a Peer
Colour Scheme
False Scent
Marsh has little in common with Christie – aside from both being women writers whose work is often set in England.
April 2nd, 2008 at 9:33 am
Having read only the one Marsh, I’m obviously in no position to say anything useful, but when Mike speaks, I’m inclined to listen.
And yet, even though Marsh and Christie may have nothing in common except time and circumstance, they’re bound to be compared with each other from now until forever.
Until I read more of Marsh’s mysteries and I’ve proven wrong, my working hypothesis is still “Marsh seems to have been Christie with personality.”
Mike, I hope you don’t mind, but from your Classic Mystery website, which everyone should go read, here are a couple of quotes:
“Marsh is not at all like many writers who attempt to bring literary values to the crime novel. Her books are not mainstream novels given a thin coating of mystery. On the contrary, the elaborate but boring murder investigations waste far too much time in Marsh’s fiction. The books fall proudly and clearly into the paradigm of the Golden Age detective story. Marsh was not at all ashamed of being a mystery writer. She just wasn’t very good at it. At least much of the time.”
and
“Marsh’s novels understandably wowed Howard Haycraft, and other critics who were trying to bring more literary merit to the detective novel. Above all, Marsh had a profound grasp on what ‘civilization’ meant. Her characters are witty, cultured, kind hearted, and wonderfully flamboyant. I feel that I am a better person for having read her.”
This does not seem to contradict my previously stated hypothesis. It also makes me want to read more of Ngaio Marsh’s work as soon as I can do it.