Ngaio Marsh

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...

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....

Christmastime in an isolated country house and, following a flaming row in the kitchen, there’s murder inside. When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected - and foul play it proves to be. Only suspicion falls not on...

When the exuberant president of Ng'ombwana proposes to dispense with the usual security arrangements on an official visit to London, his old schoolmate, Chief Superintendent Alleyn, is called in to persuade him otherwise. Consequently, on the night of the embassy's reception, the house and...

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...

A classic Ngaio Marsh mystery thriller combining drugs and sacrifice. High in the mountains stands the magnificent Saracen fortress, home of the mysterious Mr. Oberon, leader of a coven of witches. It is not the historic castle, however, that intrigues Roderick Alleyn, on holiday with his family...

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...

A spa stay turns into a homicidal holiday.... A bit snobbish and a trifle high strung, Sybil Foster prides herself on owning the finest estate in Upper Quintern and hiring the best gardener. In fact she is rapturous over the new asparagus beds when a visit from her unwelcome stepson sends her...

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...

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. Who in the quiet village of Chipping would kill wealthy...

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...

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...

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

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

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