A Man Lay Dead

Marsh introduced her famous detective in this mystery, and you can tell that she wasn t entirely sure what personality to go with At times he reads like Wimsey playing a silly ass, at other times he is crude or clever in the manner of a Bright Young Thing he takes the official police hard line one moment only to suddenly behave in unprofessional and even inappropriate ways I suspect she was trying to write realistically complex character, but the overall effect is one of schizophrenia and implau [...]

2.5 that high only because this was Marsh s first book Makes you realise what a remarkable achievement Christie s first ,was.Other reviewers have criticised Marsh for inconsistencies in Alleyn s characterisation I actually don t mind this I prefer it to having Alleyn various aristocrats angsting over being involved in something as low bred as a murder This is very tedious in Marsh s other novels And I did enjoy the start although for some strange reason, the frenetic pace had me imagining everyo [...]

This is the first of Ngaio Marsh s Roderick Alleyn mysteries and it contains everything that a great Golden Age mystery should First, the house party, complete with varying guests an adulterous wife, jealous girlfriend, mysterious Russian, etc In this case, the country house in question is Frantock and Nigel Bathgate a journalist is accompanying his cousin Charles on one of the much coveted entertaining weekends, for which invitations are hard to obtain The host, avid collector, Sir Hubert Hande [...]

Delicioso En serio, que delicia leer esta historia, que conserva el toque inocente de la Era Dorada 1920 1930 Esta es la primera novela que leo de Ngaio Marsh, y con seguridad, seguir los pasos del inspector Roderick Alleyn.

It is New Zealand November and I am trying to read books from and about New Zealand as part of my year long Oceania reading spree in 2015.Ngaio Marsh is a well loved crime writer from New Zealand, but most of her books are set in and around London Her Inspector Roderick Alleyn series seem from this first one to be the light whodunits along the lines of Agatha Christie Over the top characters, some big words I had to look up some just being regional words we don t use in the USA , silly tied up [...]

This is the first of Ngaio Marsh s Roderick Alleyn mysteries and it contains everything that you expect from a Golden Age mystery First, the house party, complete with varying guests an adulterous wife, jealous girlfriend, mysterious Russian, and In this case, the country house in question is Frantock and Nigel Bathgate a journalist is accompanying his cousin Charles on one of the much coveted entertaining weekends, for which invitations are hard to obtain The host intends to hold a murder game [...]

BOTTOM LINE Thoroughly old fashioned good read , with an aristo detective, all the suspects gathered in A Great House for a weekend house party, a peculiar murder method, wild Bolsheviks complicating everything, family intrigues galore, an affable but dim Watson what s not to like First mystery novel 1934 from a now classic author isn t challenging, brilliant, or particularly special, but is still entertaining, giving a hint of her good books yet to come and, as is usual with Marsh, there are ni [...]

Lo sab a Bueno, vale, no sab a c mo, pero sab a que ten a que ser esa persona Por pura intuici n O porque ya me he le do muchas novelas de misterio qui n lo hizo y me huelo el percal.Porque esta novela es exactamente eso una muestra del whodunit brit nico m s cl sico Todo mec nica y juegos de espejos Tiene todo lo esperable en el g nero pistas falsas del tama o de China, personajes funcionales que como m ximo te van a caer simp ticos, un detective que se guarda informaci n clave porque s y adem [...]

A young reporter is enjoying an upper class British house party when abruptly, someone is found dead I can t say I enjoyed this There s an entire subplot concerning a Bolshevic satanic cult view spoiler that goes nowhere, and isn t even an effective red herring hide spoiler This is the first Inspector Alleyn book, and it s clear that Marsh isn t sure how to write him yet His personality is all over the place one moment he s burbling Bright Young Things slang, the next he s cold and remote, the n [...]

I m not wildly enthused about Ngaio Marsh and Inspector Alleyn, at this point It s a smooth enough read, but the murder is a little haphazardly imagined some elements of it suggest premeditation, while others suggest a crime of opportunity, but it has to be one or the other or it just doesn t work Too much depends on opportunity the availability of the weapon, the position of the murdered man, the way the murder game turns out and yet the rest of it smacks of pre meditation the bizarre way the m [...]

Gossip columnist Nigel Bathgate is invited to a weekend house party at the country home of ex diplomat weapons collector Sir Hubert Handesley Among the other guests are an opinionated Russian scholar, Doctor Tokareff the mild mannered Arthur White and Nigel s middle aged cousin Charles Rankin, a roue who s having an affair with White s wife Marjorie, also there, while still being in a relationship with yet another of the guests, Rosamund Grant Sir Hubert s niece Angela North is also among the co [...]

3.5I did not particularly enjoy the first half of this book It started off like Death of a Peer though thankfully the murder happens much sooner with endless recounting of whereabouts and alibis However, as the story progressed it became much exciting Russian secret societies, torrid affairs, and the subtle romance that seems to have died with the Golden Age of of Detection all blend together to create a fun, fast paced read This is the Roderick Alleyn I was prepared to meet, complete with an e [...]

I m disappointed It never hooked me Characters and setting were blah Then I started noticing the overabundance of adverbs and how much the dialog tags bugged me.

As a completionist who collects every music album and book by authors of interest it is a pleasure to like them when I gradually try them out I was not enthralled by A Man Lay Dead , from infamous New Zealander Ngaio Marsh However, other than the crass titular man nothing put me off reading of them This is a relief, with a stack of Ngaio s series in this room nearly in entirety Police crime is the mystery type I like least in the world but since too few authors think of non crime, MYSTERIOUS st [...]

There is something ineffable about the English mysteries by women from the Golden Age, the 1920s and 30s The plots are mostly predictable and the characters are seldom real The setting and the wardrobe contribute, but the reader has to provide the details because the books don t go on much about Art Deco architecture or the fact that the ladies are wearing furs and cloche hats.Published in 1934, this first of Ngaio Marsh s Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn mysteries, A Man Lay Dead, offe [...]

As Ngaio Marsh s fledgling flight into the world of detective novels, this book had enough in it to pique my interest and leave the door open for of her works Although it lacks the mellifluous flow of Dame Agatha, in style, in writing, and in ideas, I found it still filled the gap for that country house cosy that I was looking for.There is a bit of a gimmicky feel to it overall as if Marsh is trying to capture Christie s style, and not quite succeeding, especially in Inspector Alleyn s characte [...]

Being a bit fuzzy on which John Dickson Carr that was next on my list, I started this, A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh, another golden age crime writer Until almost at the end, when I looked it up, I thought I was reading a man, when in fact I was reading Edith Ngaio Marsh In the male centered world that was the first half of the 20th century, and classic crime s golden age, I think there s a lot to be said for being a male writer I don t know about the name, except that it s Maori for a certain t [...]

I thought I had read all this series but realised recently that I had for some reason missed the first one This is a typical Golden Age mystery with a group of suspects in a country house Sir Hubert Handesley s country house weekends are noted for their murder game Unfortunately on this particular weekend there is a real corpse with a dagger in its back.Roderick Alleyn, ably assisted by Nigel Bathurst, a journalist who appears in many of the Roderick Alleyn mysteries, has to try and break a coll [...]

A MAN LAY DEAD Police Procedural England 1930s G Marsh, Naigo 1st in seriesSt Martin s Paperbacks, 1997Introducing Inspector Roderick Alleyn, who is called to the country home of Sir Hubert Handesley Sir Hubert had arranged The Murder Game as entertainment for his weekend guests Unfortunately, someone is playing for real and one of the guests is found dead This is a good introduction to a delightful series set in the classic English manor house Marsh takes her reader along not letting one know t [...]

I didn t remember enjoying her the last time I read Marsh Maybe I just wasn t ready for her then Because I really did enjoy this book.j.It is kind of the reverse of the locked room mystery Here was a man at a country estate weekend party who was murdered out in the open but everybody has an alibi.I certainly never figured it out.There was a side story about a Russian brotherhood, presumably an anarchist group, as some of their party had gathered in a house and then blew it up.I look forward to r [...]

This was not particularly a good book I had a difficult time trying to decide who was the main character and the mystery was pretty weak It seemed that at the last minute the author randomly picked one of the characters to be the murderer and then came up with some unconvincing clues to tie it all together And there was an unrelated Russian crime ring randomly thrown in I m going to attempt a few of her books because I adore all sorts of English mysteries and Ngaio Marsh is well loved by many I [...]

I decided to read this book because the author s writing is considered similar to Agatha Christie s classic mystery style I was not impressed The slang is so over the top that it gets in the way of the story and the flippant attitude of the characters is not only off putting, it makes them seem ridiculous I doubt I ll seek out other books from this author Not recommended.

The solution to the murder is just really unbelievable It even gives a specific timeframe that s so ridiculously short plus relies on a bunch of people not noticing a bunch of things At the end they even admit there s very little to pin it down on the murderer The secret society subplot is goofy and doesn t make any sense either Oh and there s a romance subplot too which is totally unconvincing and pointless but then they always are in mystery novels There were a few sections which I had to read [...]

Un polar sympa mais sans plus.

Only my second Ngaio Marsh mystery, so I decided to go back to the beginning I really enjoyed most of the book, carried along by an intriguing country house murder game suddenly gone bad, which kept it intriguing overall I found the ending stretched credibility somewhat, after a set up of what seemed an impossible murder, but it was wrapped up quickly A nice introduction to Inspector Alleyn I m curious to watch the BBC version of this to see how it plays out on film.

It s been a long time since I read the first book in Marsh s Inspector Alleyn series back when I discovered her at our local library some 30 odd years ago I had quite forgotten about the Russian intrigue and I had also forgotten that Sergeant Fox was not Alleyn s right hand man in this one Nigel Bathgate is an okay Watson and even has a few shining moments, though why Marsh had to have him fall into the hands of the Russians and have pins stuck under his fingernails is beyond me Bathgate does se [...]

I read this found it on a shelf at home not realizing that it was Marsh s first in a series of 32 It has the likable energy of a first novel but also the usual rough edges which come with first time out.The upside is this was fun to read A group of largely unlikable people is cloistered in a posh country house, where the murder totally expected by the reader occurs Everyone could have done it, even some of the servants, and there is really no way to work out the answer until it is revealed at th [...]

I really must stop reading mystery series from Book 1, particularly in the case of the cosies In those days, the public was far less demanding, and as a first attempt to find a voice, a rhythm and a character, the beginning novel in a series can be unsatisfying I found this with Patricia Wentworth, and have found it equally true with N Marsh.Like the Wimsey and Poirot Marple series, Marsh s books were directed to a very definite sector of society educated, middle class people of the sort that pl [...]

Not too bad, particularly for a first novel A Man Lay Dead is one of those lovely 1930s English manor mysteries or at any rate I think they re lovely, which is probably why I love Downton Abbey so much A bunch of people are invited to play a game called Murder, in which one of them is secretly assigned the role of murderer by the butler, and books like this make me wonder how anyone gets by without a butler these days, they do so many things and must kill one of the others, and then the survivor [...]

Ngaio Marsh created many lovely cozies after her debut, but I think that A Man Lay Dead remains my favorite In this book, Marsh establishes Inspector Roderick Alleyn as the irreverent, clever fellow we ve grown to love Those new to Ngaio Marsh should definitely start at the beginning.