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.
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