Ngaio Marsh
1) Last ditch
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Series
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English
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Ricky Alleyn, son of the renowned police detective Roderick Alleyn, has taken himself to a secluded island to write a novel. Or think about writing a novel. Or look for distractions so he can avoid writing a novel. The distractions abound, mostly in the form of colorful local characters, so all is beer and skittles until Ricky stumbles across a murder and then gets himself kidnapped. Naturally his father rushes to the island to save the day ...
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 12
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English
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Description
During World War II, Colonel Claire-a tremendously nice fellow and a disastrously bad businessman-runs a mud-baths resort in rural New Zealand. But the place is on the brink of being taken over by a local blowhard who may be a Nazi spy. Inspector Alleyn has been sent in to sort things out-and don a disguise in order to blend in the resort's motley cast of characters-in this classic tale of detection from the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master....
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 32
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English
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Description
"The bad news: This is the last in Ngaio Marsh s marvelous Inspector Alleyn series. The good: It s one of her very best. The secret to Light Thickens success may lie in its combination of some of Marsh s greatest passions, including her native New Zealand in the person of, unusually, a Maori character and the theater. Indeed, the plot centers on a production of well, let s skirt disaster by calling it the Scottish play, a play that Dame Ngaio produced...
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 18
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English
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In an almost unspeakably charming little English village, one of the local aristocrats turns up dead next to the local trout-stream with, in fact, a trout at his side. Everyone is dreadfully upset, of course, but really, just a tad irritated as well-murder is so awfully messy. Inspector Alleyn doesn't quite fit in among the inbred gentry, but they'll allow him to do his work and clear the matter up-though they do wish he didn't feel compelled to ask...
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 27
Language
English
Description
The acclaimed author brings us crime at a country-house Christmas party in "one of her best and most baffling mysteries" (Daily Express).
It's the Christmas season in 1972, and Agatha Troy is at a house party, enjoying the local holiday pageant and also painting the host's portrait. The painting's coming along fine, but the pageant goes a little pear-shaped when one of the players disappears. Could one of the eccentric guests have been involved?...
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 28
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English
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Superintendent Alleyn's old school chum, nicknamed the "Boomer," has become the president of the newly emerged African nation of Ng'ombwana, newly emerged in the wake of colonialism. Old school ties being what they are, his friend-making an official visit to London-insists that Alleyn handle his security, rather than Her Majesty's Special Branch. The Special Branch is not best pleased about this, as the Boomer is known to have some very deadly enemies,...
7) Dead water
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 23
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English
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Description
A spring may have healing properties-but the controversy over it may have harmful results-in a witty mystery by a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.
The elderly Emily Pride is perfectly pleased to have inherited an island, even if her starchy pragmatism is ever-so-faintly appalled by the island's "Pixie Falls" spring and its reported miraculous healing properties. Really, the locals' attempts to capitalize on the "miracles" are entirely too...
8) False scent
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 21
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English
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Description
Mary Bellamy is the sweetheart of the London stage-everyone simply adores darling Mary. So her fans and friends are heartbroken when somehow Mary manages to spritz herself not with her favorite perfume but with a deadly insecticide meant to be sprayed on the azaleas. What Inspector Alleyn smells is something fishy, especially since everything he learns about lovely, fragile Mary suggests that in fact she was a rather vicious battleax. ), And with...
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Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 25
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English
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Description
Inspector Alleyn's wife, the artist Agatha Troy, has a special fondness for Constables-the paintings, that is, not the policemen. So she jumps at the chance to take a river cruise through "Constable Country" in the east of England, in honor of the nineteenth-century master of landscapes. Her enthusiasm dims a little, though, when it becomes clear that the ticket became available at the last minute only because a previous passenger was murdered in...
10) Photo finish
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Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 31
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English
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Description
Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, C.I.D., Scotland Yard, must identify "Strix" (a dangerous shutterbug) among the assemblage of luminaries gathered at the New Zealand hideaway of the opera star La Sommita's wealthy patron.
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English
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"Inspector Alleyn just wants to write a letter to his wife, but World War II, for one, keeps intruding. It's war-work, after all, that has brought Alleyn to this seedy hospital in New Zealand's hinterlands, and it's the war that has left the hospital swimming in convalescing soldiers--noisy, often drunk, and always over-interested in the nurses. Nor is the weather helping. A storm has killed the electrical power, leaving Alleyn, the soldiers, the...
12) Enter a murderer
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Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 2
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English
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Description
Inspector Roderick Alleyn has been invited to an opening night, a new play in which two characters quarrel and then struggle for a gun, with predictably sad results. Even sadder, the gun was not, in fact, loaded with blanks. And when it comes to interviewing witnesses, actors can be a deceptive lot ...
13) A man lay dead
Author
Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 1
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English
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Description
This classic from the Golden Age of British mystery opens during a country-house party between the two world wars-servants bustling, gin flowing, the gentlemen in dinner jackets, the ladies all slink and smolder. Even more delicious: The host, Sir Hubert Handesley, has invented a new and especially exciting version of that beloved parlor entertainment, The Murder Game...
14) Vintage murder
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Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 5
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English
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Description
A police inspector finds trouble during a trip to New Zealand: "It's time to start comparing Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around." -New York Magazine
Inspector Roderick Alleyn has taken a break from England and journeyed to New Zealand, and traveling along with him are the members of the Carolyn Dacres English Comedy Company. The actors' operatic intrigues offer an amusing diversion-until, unexpectedly, they turn deadly. And Alleyn...
15) When in Rome
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 26
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English
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Description
A group of well-to-do tourists is visiting Italy's magnificent churches, but they've found themselves stumbling into an unholy web of blackmail and drug-smuggling-and, in the depths of a Roman basilica, murder. Fortunately Inspector Roderick Alleyn is among the group as part of an undercover assignment, and prepared to extract a confession ...
16) Death in ecstasy
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 4
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English
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Did lovely Cara Quoyne get a whiff of the bitter almonds as she raised the goblet to her lips? We'll never know: With a single sip of prussic acid she transported herself to the Hereafter.
Now Inspector Alleyn must investigate a murder at the House of the Sacred Flame, a rather quirky little religious sect in London where Cara was a novice. It seems that somebody was operating from very un-spiritual motivations ...
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Series
Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 16
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English
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Description
Newly arrived from New Zealand and in need of funds, Martyn Tarne takes a job as a dresser to the Vulcan Theater's leading lady. Along with a paycheck, this also provides her with a ringside seat to the backstage circus-and the eventual murder that occurs on opening night. Inspector Alleyn is soon called to solve the case and put a stop to all the drama ...
18) Killer dolphin
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 24
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English
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Description
The impresario Peregrine Jay has fulfilled a long-cherished dream: Thanks to a very generous gift, he now owns the Dolphin Theatre, and has restored it to its former glory. To celebrate the reopening, a no-expenses-spared production of The Glove, a new play about the discovery of a true Shakespearean accessory, is performed. London's chattering classes are abuzz with gossip about the theatre, rumors about Peregrine, critiques of the play. But when...
19) Hand in glove
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 22
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English
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Description
One has to admit that the timing was peculiar. No one could doubt that Mr. Percival Pyke Period was genuinely distraught to hear that his neighbor, Harry Cartell, had turned up dead in a ditch. But how is it that Mr. Percival Pyke came to write the letter of condolence before the body was found? And how is it that Mr. Cartell came to inspire such violence? Yes he was boring, yes he was stuffy, but who would kill a man for the crime of being a bad...
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Roderick Alleyn mysteries volume 7
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English
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It's debutante season in London, and that means giggles and tea-dances, white dresses and inappropriate romances...and much too much champagne. And, apparently, a blackmailer, which is where Inspector Roderick Alleyn comes in. The social whirl is decidedly not Alleyn's environment, so he brings in an assistant in the form of Lord "Bunchy" Gospell, everybody's favorite uncle. Bunchy is more than lovable; he's also got some serious sleuthing skills....