The Roderick Alleyn Mysteries: The Nursing Home Murder; Death in a White Tie; Final Curtain

by Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh's bestselling and ingenious third novel remains one of the most popular pieces of crime fiction of all time. Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse Jane... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1856274284
• ISBN13: 9781856274289
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Grange Books
• Length: 790 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.

Customer Reviews

4.5 stars--Alleyn & Bathgate mystery

This is a nice little mystery which will keep you guessing--in parallel with Chief Inspector Alleyn--until almost the end. It includes several references to Marsh's two prior mysteries A Man Lay Dead & Enter a Murderer. There are tons of potential murderers & motives galore--even some Bolsheviks (as in a previous work)--with Alleyn's highly enjoyable repartee with his Boswell, journalist Nigel Bathgate & his fiancée Angela North. While it's a fairly short work, it's satisfying, quite good, but perhaps not Marsh's best--which is very good indeed. This novel has been anthologized in at least two Marsh collections: The Roderick Alleyn Mysteries: The Nursing Home Murder; Death in a White Tie; Final Curtain & BOX SET "Four of Her Finest": The Nursing Home Murder / Colour Scheme / Dead Water / Spinsters in Jeopardy. Best of all, it demonstrates Marsh's almost unequalled style & humorous observations. My favorites are: p. 11: so maddeningly remote. Their very embraces were masked in a chilly patina of good form. He supposed he had married her in a brief wave of enthusiasm for polar exploration. p. 112: [Journalist Bathgate]--"Do you read crime fiction?" [Chief Inspector Alleyn]--"I dote on it. It's such a relief to escape from one's work into an entirely different atmosphere." p. 159: It gave her an uncanny resemblance to something human. It's also interesting that Marsh quotes Shakespeare: p. 139: "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes" since Agatha Christie published a mystery entitled By The Pricking Of My Thumbs (Tommy and Tuppence) & Ray Bradbury published Something Wicked This Way Comes. [page #'s are from the 1963 copyright but probably the same as this one]

GREAT READ!!!

FROM A CLASSIC MYSTERY AUTHOR A WONDERFUL BOOK STUFFED WITH THREE GREAT MYSTERIES AND THE DASHING RODERICK ALLEYN