A Man Lay Dead
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
‘Faultless story-telling.’
New York Times
Product Description
Two Ngaio Marsh mysteries.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This was Marsh's first detective story, written as a pleasant diversion in 1932. As such, it's really quite impressive, although not up to the standard of her later books. The plot is very conventional - a Murder Game producing a genuine corpse - but the solution is clever and original, and the murderer comes across as pitiable, rather than evil. The only thing that spoiled the book for me was the introduction of a silly sub-plot involving members of a Russian brotherhood: this sort of thing belongs to the spy thriller,not the classical detective story. Marsh's detective, the urbane, public-school educated Inspector Alleyn, is a pleasant change from the "ordinary" plodding policeman preferred by many writers of the time. Less successful, however, is her creation of a "Watson" figure in the shape of journalist Nigel Bathgate, a completely stereotypical young Englishman. Thankfully, he is absent from most of her later novels.
Format:Paperback
You would think that people in murder mysteries wouldn't go on weekend trips to remote mansions... and definitely wouldn't play murder games. So guess what happens in "A Man Lay Dead," the first of Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn mysteries -- while it feels a bit by-the-numbers at times, it's a genuine brainscrambler.
To spice up a weekend party at Sir Hubert Handesley's's estate, the guests decide to play "Murder" -- which goes wrong when they stumble across Charles Rankin's corpse with an antique dagger stuck in his back. There are a few motives floating around, but the missing Russian butler seems to be the guilty party just because he's suspiciously missing.
But Inspector Alleyn from Scotland Yard isn't quite sure about the murder, especially since the motive seems rather flimsy. And he must unravel a tangle of alibis, motives (illicit romance! The knife!) and odd clues before he can discover who is responsible for Rankin's murder
Country estate + a pair of attractive young things + hearty squire + suspicious/quirky foreigner + a handful of other random people + a Scotland Yard Inspector = one generic murder mystery.
This was not only Ngaio Marsh's first mystery novel, but her first novel period -- and as a result, "A May Lay Dead" is rather paint-by-numbers as a mystery story. However, you can see the flickerings of unpolished greatness under the surface, and the second half of the novel is where she really starts to blossom -- both in prose and in plot.
Marsh unspools the plot at a pleasantly leisurely pace, filling it with sunlit English countrysides and comfortable old manorhouses. And she sprinkles said plot with a fair number of red herrings, quirky humor (Ethel the Intelligent and Florence the Farsighted), and half-formed motives, although not as many as you'd expect. And while her prose is pleasant but unexceptional in the first half of the book, Marsh hits her stride about halfway through ("Impossible to see behind the shadowy face of the detective into the pigeonholes of his brain").
Alleyn himself is a rather likable and promising detective -- we don't know much about him personally just yet, but he's depicted as a cultured, high society man who has somehow ended up in Scotland Yard. Marsh makes him intelligent and clever, but doesn't make him TOO perfect (when confronted by a surly kid with evidence, he doesn't know what to do).
"A Man Lay Dead" is a solid if slightly generic start to Ngaio Marsh's classic series -- and by the way she improves in the second half, you know that better is yet to come.
To spice up a weekend party at Sir Hubert Handesley's's estate, the guests decide to play "Murder" -- which goes wrong when they stumble across Charles Rankin's corpse with an antique dagger stuck in his back. There are a few motives floating around, but the missing Russian butler seems to be the guilty party just because he's suspiciously missing.
But Inspector Alleyn from Scotland Yard isn't quite sure about the murder, especially since the motive seems rather flimsy. And he must unravel a tangle of alibis, motives (illicit romance! The knife!) and odd clues before he can discover who is responsible for Rankin's murder
Country estate + a pair of attractive young things + hearty squire + suspicious/quirky foreigner + a handful of other random people + a Scotland Yard Inspector = one generic murder mystery.
This was not only Ngaio Marsh's first mystery novel, but her first novel period -- and as a result, "A May Lay Dead" is rather paint-by-numbers as a mystery story. However, you can see the flickerings of unpolished greatness under the surface, and the second half of the novel is where she really starts to blossom -- both in prose and in plot.
Marsh unspools the plot at a pleasantly leisurely pace, filling it with sunlit English countrysides and comfortable old manorhouses. And she sprinkles said plot with a fair number of red herrings, quirky humor (Ethel the Intelligent and Florence the Farsighted), and half-formed motives, although not as many as you'd expect. And while her prose is pleasant but unexceptional in the first half of the book, Marsh hits her stride about halfway through ("Impossible to see behind the shadowy face of the detective into the pigeonholes of his brain").
Alleyn himself is a rather likable and promising detective -- we don't know much about him personally just yet, but he's depicted as a cultured, high society man who has somehow ended up in Scotland Yard. Marsh makes him intelligent and clever, but doesn't make him TOO perfect (when confronted by a surly kid with evidence, he doesn't know what to do).
"A Man Lay Dead" is a solid if slightly generic start to Ngaio Marsh's classic series -- and by the way she improves in the second half, you know that better is yet to come.
Format:Paperback
Taking place at an English country estate during a house party weekend, Ngaio Marsh's first Roderick Alleyn mystery, written in 1934, forecasts the later success of her successful thirty-two book Alleyn series. Invited to the home of Sir Hubert Handesley, where they will participate in a "murder" game, the houseguests know that one of them will be chosen to be the "murderer" and that s/he will select and "murder" one of the other guests. In this case, however, when the gong sounds and the lights come on, they discover that one of the guests has actually been murdered.
Written in the tradition of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Margery Allingham, this "closed room" mystery draws Inspector Alleyn of Scotland Yard into the case. A character who, at this point, has yet to achieve the unique characteristics which eventually made him such a popular detective, Alleyn interviews the guests and staff, and, surprisingly, draws guest Nigel Bathgate, the cousin of the victim, into the investigation of the murder. As Alleyn and Bathgate investigate, subplots involving an antique Oriental dagger, an anarchist Russian secret society, a grisly murder in London, and the romantic attachments of the victim unfold.
No more realistic than other mysteries of the period, this one, too, follows a formula, with surprising discoveries which strain credulity, at the same time that the author is tempting the reader to solve the case. Much is made of the floor plan of the estate and the alibis of the guests, but ultimately, the solution depends not on logic, but on information which the author does not give her readers until the conclusion, making logical deduction impossible here. Still the novel is fun to read as a period piece, a mystery which calls to mind a long-lost way of life with all its superficial pleasures and amusements. Mary Whipple
Written in the tradition of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Margery Allingham, this "closed room" mystery draws Inspector Alleyn of Scotland Yard into the case. A character who, at this point, has yet to achieve the unique characteristics which eventually made him such a popular detective, Alleyn interviews the guests and staff, and, surprisingly, draws guest Nigel Bathgate, the cousin of the victim, into the investigation of the murder. As Alleyn and Bathgate investigate, subplots involving an antique Oriental dagger, an anarchist Russian secret society, a grisly murder in London, and the romantic attachments of the victim unfold.
No more realistic than other mysteries of the period, this one, too, follows a formula, with surprising discoveries which strain credulity, at the same time that the author is tempting the reader to solve the case. Much is made of the floor plan of the estate and the alibis of the guests, but ultimately, the solution depends not on logic, but on information which the author does not give her readers until the conclusion, making logical deduction impossible here. Still the novel is fun to read as a period piece, a mystery which calls to mind a long-lost way of life with all its superficial pleasures and amusements. Mary Whipple
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
