Ngaio Marsh

It was planned as an act of charity: a new piano for the parish hall, an amusing play to finance the gift. But its execution was doomed when Miss Campanula sat down to play. A chord was struck, a shot rang out and Miss Campanula was dead. A case of sinister infatuation for the brilliant Chief...

The season had begun. Débutantes and chaperones were planning their luncheons, teas, dinners, balls. And the blackmailer was planning his strategies, stalking his next victim. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knew that something was up. He had already planted his friend Lord Robert...

The London season has begun. But while debutantes and chaperones plan their luncheons and balls a deadly blackmailer is stalking the highest echelons of society. Naturally, it falls to charming, aloof Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn - son of Lady Alleyn - to investigate the case. He has...

It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model's pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been re-enacted in earnest: the model is dead, fixed for ever in one of the most dramatic poses Troy has ever seen...

Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But...

Dreams of stardom had lured Martyn Tarne from faraway New Zealand to make the dreary, soul-destroying round of West End agents and managers in search of work. The Vulcan Theatre had been her last forlorn hope, and now, driven by sheer necessity, she was glad to accept the humble job of dresser...

The lives of the inhabitants of Swevenings are disrupted only by a fierce competition to catch the Old Un, a monster trout known to dwell in a beautiful stream which winds past their homes. Then one of their small community is found brutally murdered; beside him is the freshly killed trout. Both...

In this thrilling yarn, the art of detection gets clouded by desire. It was a bizarre pose for beautiful model Sonia Gluck—and her last. For in the draperies of her couch lay a fatal dagger, and behind her murder lies all the intrigue and acid-etched temperament of an artist's colony. Called...

En route to a family vacation on the French Riviera, Inspector Roderick Alleyn glimpses from the train a shocking tableau. In a moonlit window, a white-robed figure raises a knife to a woman's shadow. Thus begins his incognito exploration of the Chateau of the Silver Goat, where a jet-set cult's...

An English manor house on the moors is an ideal setting for a murder—and for one of Ngaio Marsh's classic murder mysteries. The occasion is a Christmas party hosted by Mr. Hilary Bill-Tasman, landed proprietor of Halberds Manor and authority on antiques. Santa Claus is in attendance, played by...

Young Ricky Alleyn has come to the picturesque fishing village of Deep Cove to write. Though the sleepy little town offers few diversions, Ricky manages to find the most distracting one of all: murder. For in a muddy ditch, he sees a dead equestrienne whose last leap was anything but an accident...

A ritual dance becomes a murderous mambo… The village of South Mardian always observes the winter solstice with an ancient, mystical sword dance, complete with costumed performers. But for one of them, the excitement proves too heady, and his decapitation turns the fertility rite into a...

Lord Pastern fired his revolver. The figure in the spotlight fell and the coup-de-theatre had become murder. Could Inspector Alleyn believe Pastern had let hatred of his future son-in-law go too far? When Lord Pastern Bagott takes up with the hot music of Breezy Bellair and His Boys, his...

A man dies with his hand on a radio dial. A disguised aristocrat finds murder at the opening night of a play. A cryptogram produces death in an English churchyard. These are just a few of the situations that confront Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn who, with his lovely wife Agatha Troy...

Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse, Jane Harden, are almost too nervous to operate. The emergency case on the table before them is the Home Secretary - and they both have very good, personal reasons to wish him dead. Within hours he does die, although the...

When a famous theatre actor is found dead in his changing room, it is initially labelled a suicide. But Inspector Alleyn believes there is more to it, and soon the cast of the production find themselves under suspicion....

Cryptic inscriptions in an antique Bible appear to record three gruesome deaths that took place in a quiet English village in 1779....

Six invités sont conviés par un excentrique collectionneur d'armes à participer à une murder party dans sa propriété campagnarde...

Lorsque Arthur Surbonadier s'écroule sur la scène du théâtre londonien de la Licorne, les spectateurs retiennent leur souffle. Quel talent...

Rickie Alleyn, son of the famed detective Roderick Alleyn, had taken to the peaceful Channel Island village of Deep Cove to write his book. However, soon enough the tedium of provincial life threatens to send him packing - until, that is, he finds a dead stablehand, and the sleepy community's...