1967 classic English detective fiction; twenty-fourth of Marsh's
novels of Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Playwright and director Peregrine
Jay is handed the dilapidated Dolphin Theatre, and is making a success
of it, at least until the night-watchman is murdered. US vt Killer
Dolphin.
This is an odd book: one can readily see the seams showing, as
the Bitchy Theatre Story is added once again to the Detective Novel
but Marsh doesn't stir quite enough and there are great big lumps of
one or the other. Most obviously, the titular death doesn't happen
until nearly half-way through, and most of what goes before is much
more the theatrical clash of personalities than the setup for who's
going to fill the roles of murderer and victim.
There's the Young Couple whom even Marsh is clearly starting to regard
as a bit superfluous to the whole business, one of whom is the initial
viewpoint character; otherwise Marsh manages to be reasonably original
in her cast, rather than recycling from her earlier theatrical
mysteries. (The Supporting Actress Scorned isn't as developed as one
might have liked, but the Horrible Child Actor is particularly
effective.)
Alas for the plot, there's a particular element of alibi which is so
meticulously described, and with a loophole so blatantly unquestioned,
that I immediately fastened on it as the obvious explanation, to the
detriment of my enjoyment of the evidence and camouflage presented in
the rest of the book.
A side element of the plot deals with what might be Hamnet
Shakespeare's glove, rediscovered after many years, and consideration
of whether it's going to leave the country as was threatened for the
Goya Wellington;
this may well have caught the mood of the times, but Marsh assumes it
will catch the reader's mood and it comes over now as a bit of an
alien thing to be worried about. (We now have plenty of horrible
private collectors in Britain who'd lock the thing away and only
show it to their friends.)
But at this point Marsh seems to be writing primarily to get the
people written down; like many detective-story writers she's run out
of changes to ring on a murder plot, and it tends to fade into the
background or simply be a framework on which to hang sparkling
conversation by interesting (if sometimes horrid) people. (And Marsh
is just as dismissive of homosexuality as she was back in Death by
Ecstasy; I keep reading suggestions that her representations of gay
men are unusually progressive, but mostly that seems to consist of
having them in the cast at all.)
Followed by Clutch of Constables.
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