What do You think about Clutch Of Constables (2015)?
I had read only one Ngaio Marsh book and didn't love it. But then I read a great biography of her by Joanne Drayton, and decided to give Dame N another go. This is a perfect whodunnit - enticing cast of characters (you spend the whole time going: 'No, too obvious, so it must be...no, too obvious'), and although some of the suspects are borderline stereotype, Troy Alleyn, the detective's wife, who is trapped on a boat with the lot of them, is refreshingly smart, brave and real. Alleyn himself is quite posh with a wonderful dry sense of humour - when his sidekick Inspector Fox ferrets through a suitcase belonging to the American female suspect, he is disappointed with her slip, saying he'd always expected American undergarments should be more 'troublante'. Alleyn: 'I am speechless.' Humour and verve, and a satisfying ending. Now I'm off to read When in Rome...
—Catherine Robertson
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 in 1934. Some of the stories have been dramatized on PBS Mystery. Ngaio Marsh has been classed with other female mystery writers such as Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham and Agatha Christie, who have long been among my favorites of the era.This is a series with reappearing characters along with Alleyn. However, it's not necessary to read them in order of publication, so I would suggest this one would be enjoyed by those who like Sayers, Allingham, and Christie.
—Sally
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 remarkably quick in those days - he is immediately concerned, for the berth was originally taken in the name of a Mr Andropolous, a London art dealer murdered in Soho. The police believe the murderer to be a dealer in drugs and art forgeries known as 'the Jampot', and Alleyn suspects he might also be on the boat trip.Troy herself gradually becomes uneasy, several small events possibly bearing a sinister interpretation - a jumpy reaction to the mention of the painter Constable as apparently visible in the landscapes the boat passes through. (The similarity of several points on the journey to his paintings is the reason for the title of the book.) Then a painting very much in the manner of a Constable is found by one of her fellow passengers hidden in a drawer in some antique shop furniture, and then another passenger is murdered.Considered as a crime novel in isolation, Clutch of Constables would be an excellent example of the genre; it is its position in such a lengthy series of novels which rather lets it down. Troy has such an unfortunate tendency to get innocently involved in a murder - she would be rather a suspicious character but for her husband.
—Simon Mcleish
