Clutch of Constables

I wasn t expecting much from this as I hated the only other Ngaio Marsh book I ve read Death at the Dolphin , and chose to read it only so that I could get rid of it and clear a space on my shelves That backfired though, because I found it pretty compelling It was good enough that I think I ll have to borrow my sister s Ngaio Marsh collection.

I can always rely on a Ngaio Marsh novel Her writing is just so spot on, light but not frivolous, entertaining and smart I love Alleyn Troy s relationship.

The greatest mystery why was the body moved in such a bizarre way remains unsolved Unforgivable.

Good to the Last Page, in my opinion This is the second time I had read it, but did not remember much of it Enjoyable and found out Inspector Fox s nickname is Teddy First time I even knew his first name was Edward, I think.

If you want proof of NM s fundamental cruelty, you have only to witness her treatment of that most loathsome of objects a person with a head cold.Dorothy Sayers could be equally unsparing, but in general, her impartial catalogs of human frailty make her readers feel compassion, rather than embarrassed contempt Her pitiless recitation of weaknesses petty flaws, awkward moments, hypocrisies, gaffes, people exposing themselves so dreadfully has the affect of making those people seem worth pitying W [...]

It s a very long time since I last read a book by Ngaio Marsh My mother suggested I try Agatha Christie when I moved up from the junior library and a while later, when I d brought home pretty much every book by Agatha Christie that the library had, she suggested that I might like Ngaio Marsh I did, and again I brought home all of her books that the library could offer over a period of time But I haven t read anything that she wrote since.The books didn t call me back But a couple of weeks ago I [...]

Originally published on my blog here in May 1999.Instead of the cruise liner so beloved by crime writers, Clutch of Constables takes place on a small riverboat cruise, on a river described rather vaguely as in the north country and in the fens Troy Alleyn, exhausted at the end of a successful one man show, takes a cancelled berth on this trip, while her husband is in the States at a criminological conference.When her letter telling him this reaches him the post to San Francisco must have been re [...]

This is one of my favorite books in an excellent series I enjoy the way Marsh keeps both Troy and Roderick in the story though they are separated for much of the novel I also like the frame of Alleyn teaching this to policemen in a class I think creating a murder during a houseboat vacation is very clever it s a twist on the usual isolated country house And all of the characters are well drawn and quite interesting The mystery is genuinely mysterious, as are most of Marsh s stories.A home run an [...]

I have a real fondness for this series Have no memory of which ones I ve read before, and it s certainly been decades since I d read any, but have recently read several and have found them all enjoyable Troy, Alleyn s wife takes a riverboat cruise on her own and, of course, becomes embroiled in a mysterious death The writing s good, and while the series was written over the course of nearly fifty years, I think they hold up pretty well.

is this my favorite Marsh no, i guess it s not totally better than the ones with of the Troy Roderick interchangesmehow Marsh still fooled me with all the info and red herrings i still couldn t see who was the bad guy even with only 2 choices left well told, great setting, fabulous mystery

I enjoy this book every time I re read it Probably because Troy Alleyn is one of the major characters and I always enjoy the books that she is in With husband and son both away, Troy is killing time waiting for the London train when she sees a notice of a last minute cancellation on a 5 day river canal boat cruise On impulse she takes it, and meets the rest of the mixed bag of passengers as they wait for the boat, the Zodiac, to arrive The chapters alternate between Inspector Alleyn addressing a [...]

I read this as part of an omnibus which also included When in Rome and Tied up in tinsel This was first published in 1968 so I probably first read it sometime in the early 1970s This is a pretty silly story where Troy Alleyn goes on a short cruise on a river possibly in south Yorkshire and one of the other passengers is an international criminal One of the other passengers disappears and the main part of the book is which of the small cast of characters is the criminal At the end Chief Superinte [...]

While Alleyn is giving lectures in the U.S Troy spontaneously takes a short river cruise awaiting his return Clever conceit of having Alleyn observe, at a remove through his wife s letters to him, a crime unfolding Alleyn, Fox et Cie Fox having at least one occasion to use his French do make their appearance and no spoiler here solve the crime, with the help of Troy s acute observations.

I was recommended this as a first Ngaio Marsh, and I enjoyed it It has reached the point of being slightly knowing in its set up of a closed environment in which two separate crimes play themselves out Alleyn s wife is definitely worthy of the comparison with Harriet Vane It s a very different view of the British habit of messing about on narrow boats from _Three Men in a Boat_, but has a similar understanding of the absurdity.

I give it four stars as a whodunit because it keeps you guessing but as a novel it shows its age I think having your arch villain called the Jampot is probably not a good start and the whole book is a little twee But I have always liked Alleyn and Troy played in the TV series by the excellent Belinda Lang who I have always had a thing for and it is a very long time since I first read this.

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I really liked the structure of this installment and the emphasis on Troy.

Good read, and a good representative of the series.

Dated But I enjoyed all the Troy.

I think the reason I liked this novel so much was that Troy was a central character and we see the setup through her eyes Nasty murder, but I did finally suspect whodunit.

Easy reading detective novel Interesting characters and plot.

In our current political atmosphere, the conspiracy among a band of criminals to use the disadvantage of a Black passenger aboard the river cruise to mask their collaboration was frighteningly reminiscent of certain maneuvers to redirect our attention from the big issues of the day.

Rory Alleyn, giving a lecture, recounts a particularly interesting case involving his wife, art fraud, and a criminal team upon a boat.Alleyn s wife Troy, having just had an exhibit installed, is about to return to London when she sees a last minute cancellation on a 5 day boat trip around Constable Country Knowing that her husband is in America on a lecture tour, and that she would be returning to an empty flat after an exhausting time preparing for the show, she takes the trip on the spur of t [...]

These notes made in 1984 This Marsh involves Troy, Inspector Alleyn s wife, who is an artist Almost inevitably, then, it also involves an art forgery ring I am not sure that I would have guessed correctly who killed the tedious but harmless spinster, had it not been for the giveaway picture on the front cover Fontana, 1984, ed about which I m half inclined to write the publisher a letter In any case, I find Marsh a much convincing creator of character than say Christie, and even though they are [...]

One of my favorites

Troy Roderick Alleyn s artist wife decides on the spur of the moment to go on a cruise in Constable country She wants peace and quiet but virtually as soon as she gets on board the MV Zodiac she realises something is wrong and has grave suspicions about what her fellow passengers are really up to On the first morning she discovers that the person whose place she took has actually been murdered Troy s husband is away from home and she starts to get so concerned about what is going on that she pho [...]

An Inspector Alleyn mystery Marsh was one of the discoveries that we made reading TALKING ABOUT DETECTIVE FICTION by P.D James Maggee read the first few chapters on her own and told me the plot and then I read the remainder of the book aloud to her An interesting structure Alleyn s wife, Troy, decides on a whim to take a river tour while he is away attending a series of meetings in America and finds herself in the midst of an unfolding mystery We get part of the story after the fact in a series [...]

A typically pleasant Marsh mystery that however had some unfortunate flaws.Things I enjoyed Troy So much Troy I love Troy Marsh is delightfully mean about a character s head cold It has somewhat of a view spoiler Murder on the Orient Express feel to it, since nearly all the passengers turn out to be villains hide spoiler Things that didn t work The framing device of Alleyn giving a lecture on the case was horribly tiresome and grated every time it appeared I think the book would have been better [...]

Marsh s later books evolved to a really refined and interesting style They combine elements of British farce, character drama, and MacLean style thriller They also progress through real time of writing in decades, like Rex Stout s novels, and form a sort of modern historical fiction as a result The Troy, Alleyn, and Fox relationships are charming and I appreciate the comfort of knowing the murderer and victim will be relatively unsympathetic and the young lovers absent in this novel and children [...]

I read this book, and all of the Ngaio Marsh Inspector Alleyn books many years ago Seeing that they are beginning to appear now as audiobooks, I bought this one to listen to Although I remembered a little about the story, it was almost as if it were new to me, and I devoured it pretty quickly I would compare this particular plot, because of the complexity and unexpected resolution, to Christie s Murder on the Orient Express.This book was first published in 1968, well into her series which began [...]