RogerBW's Blog

Photo Finish, Ngaio Marsh 21 January 2018

1980 classic English detective fiction; thirty-first of Marsh's novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. The Great Soprano is being pestered by a paparazzo; her millionaire friend takes her to a retreat in the New Zealand bush, with just a dozen good friends – including the young composer she's taken over, and whose new opera she's going to put on in a private performance. But all that's not going to stop someone from killing her.

All right, there is a private helicopter, but apart from that detail and a few other period references (like the Jacqueline Kennedy paparazzi business from 1972) this story could easily have been set in the 1950s or even the 1930s. Once more, a group of variously dislikeable people is gathered in a country house, and a storm blows up to keep them isolated while murder is done.

She towed Troy up to Alleyn and unfolded this proposition. Her manner suggested the pleasurable likelihood of his offering to seduce her at the first opportunity. "So you come to the salon too," she said, "to hear music?" And in her velvet tones the word music was fraught with much the same meaning as china in The Country Wife.

The parts have been shuffled around again, but La Sommita distinctly echoes Mary Bellamy from False Scent; there are still the Young Hopeful, the Horrible Gay Man (most of Marsh's gay men are horrible), and a variety of rude mechanicals; various business types never seem to get much in the way of personality, and this isn't really a story about personality – which is a shame, because for me that's where Marsh most often shines.

The solution does not satisfy. Yes, it answers the basic detective-story puzzles of who could have been when and where and who's lying about it, but it's all quite straightforward, the scheme doesn't seem to match the character of the murderer as has previously been established, and the motivation is dreary. It's more of a technical mystery in the late Agatha Christie vein than what I expect from Marsh.

But what this book is for, at least for me, is another chance to see Alleyn and Troy working together on a murder (for all he wishes she were well off out of it), keeping the corpse safe and doing some deduction while waiting for the storm to blow itself out and the police to arrive.

Bell-birds chimed through the bush like rain distilled into sound.

It's still not the good Marsh, but it's decent. Followed by Light Thickens.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: Grave Mistake | Series: Roderick Alleyn | Next in series: Light Thickens

  1. Posted by Dr Bob at 12:32pm on 21 January 2018

    Do you think the suspects all being dislikeable counts as a trope? After all, if they were all nice people, we the readers might take against the detectives who are prying into their lives.

  2. Posted by RogerBW at 04:52pm on 21 January 2018

    Many mystery stories fall into one of the general classes of "everyone loved the victim, so who could possibly have had a motive" and "everyone hated the victim, so anyone could have had a motive, but who could actually have done it". Both of them serve as means to keep more of the suspects in play for more of the book than if one could start quickly eliminating some of them, and Christianna Brand in particular is very good at making everyone have a personality suitable for a murderer.

    The tougher trick, I think, is to make some or all of the suspects sympathetic, to the point where one may feel quite disappointed that X has been caught because (apart from the whole murder thing) he's a really good person.

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1