I know the saying is "don't judge a book by its cover", but the cover can indicate how low you should keep your expectations of a given book. In this case, we had:- a spelling error in an endorsement: "Goulish enough to set the blood tingling, the scalp itching with apprehension..." Spelling errors are never a good sign.- a quote on the back cover featuring an event that does not match the event depicted on the front cover. This is the case with my edition (Fontanta / Collins, Sixth Impression 1971). It confused the heck out of me until I read the quote more closely (and arrived at that point in the book).- the event quoted on the back cover taking place only in the last third of the story. That indicates how slowly the story moves for the first two-thirds.But we're not here to complain about the cover. On to the story.The titular Lampreys like to live large -- there are several children in the brood, and the family lives beyond their means. The patriarch, Charlie, seems to have a talent for investing in promising-sounding ventures that fall apart dramatically, leaving him scraping for pennies and wheedling money out of his much wealthier elder brother, Gabriel. Needless to say suspicions run quite high when Gabriel, aka Lord Wutherwood, is found in the Lamprey building's lift with a skewer through his eye, eventually dying of his injuries. But the question is, which of the many Lampreys did it? Or did any of them actually commit the crime? They all seem such nice folk, it's hard to believe...But Inspector Alleyn will find out the truth and bring the killer to justice.This is an okay story, but it takes a long time to set up. The first few chapters establish the family's situation and introduces the family friend, Roberta "Robin" Grey, whom they met while living in -- take a wild guess if you are a regular Marsh reader -- NEW ZEALAND!!! Now, I love that country; it's very beautiful and the people there have wonderful accents, but does EVERY Marsh story HAVE to relate to it at least marginally? It seems rather forced to me. "Obligatory New Zealand reference? Check." But it certainly did not need three chapters or however long it took to establish the Lamprey family's character and their relationship with Robin. One chapter would have probably sufficed. I'm rather impatient that way with exposition sometimes.Still, this book does have black magic, goofy upper-class British people, and witty detectives going for it, so you could do worse than this book. However, I would not recommend it as a starter if you're just getting into Marsh.
I've been reading some Ngaio Marsh at the instigation of P.D. James' Talking About Detective Fiction. I just finished this one. If you come across a copy, pick it up and turn immediately to page 245. Alleyn stands at the edge of the Thames with a night cop on the beat, in conversation about the play Macbeth. For a page and a half, the night cop dissects the play from a professional perspective ("Not that there seemed to be anything like what you'd call an inquiry."). It is a delightful conversation and of course helps Alleyn to the solution of his current case.There are delightful spots like that one to be found throughout the Alleyn novels, but the delightful spots are invariably interlarded with an interminable amount of explication hashing and rehashing every character's actions that seems to drone on forever. Also, I notice that Marsh without fail takes at least one self-hating slap at crime novels in each of her own novels. I wonder if perhaps she isn't determined to bring the reader to some minuscule amount of real understanding of the plodding nature of actual police work.I'm glad James forced my hand, good to be at least somewhat schooled in the roots of a genre I write in, but I've had Greg Rucka's Smoker on my to-read shelf since November. Time to move on.
What do You think about Death Of A Peer (1998)?
Originally published on my blog here in June 1998.This is one of my least favourite Ngaio Marsh novels. The crime is puzzling enough and the solution typically ingenious, and Roderick Alleyn is his usual urbane self; the problem is that I find it impossible to have any sympathy for the family at the centre of the story, the Lampreys. The Lampreys are an upper class family always suffering from financial crises, yet unable to work or to save because of their frivolous background. Marsh keeps on emphasising the point that all who meet them cannot help but love them, because of their charm; this didn't come across to me at all. Returning to England following some years in New Zealand, they invite the head of the family to their London flat, where they hope to charm him into giving them some money. Following a grotesque set of charades and planned supposedly charming and spontaneous appeals from the various members of the family, he has a furious row with Lord Henry and leaves, only to be brutally murdered in the lift on the way down.Under suspicion, the Lampreys show themselves at their worst, speaking French to discuss the crime in front of the PC they patronisingly assume won't be able to understand; the identical twin sons refusing to admit to which of them went down in the lift with the victim; lying about the refusal to give the money to them and so on.The inability of the Lampreys to do anything of any use to anyone, their total parasitism on the "lower classes", and the way in which everyone looks on their egotism as charming because they are from the aristocracy - these all amount to good arguments for a socialistic view of the class system. I'm fairly sure Marsh didn't mean it that way, and it probably felt different at the time (though if I were reading this during the war and had experienced the hardship of the Depression I don't think I'd have felt very charitable towards them). It's difficult to read it without projecting 1990s attitudes, but I do hope we have moved on.
—Simon Mcleish
6/28/10I'm 3/4 of the way through reading through all of Ngaio Marsh's mysteries, which means re-reading the ones I can't quite remember. For Death of a Peer (which I apparently read almost exactly two years ago!), I could remember on my own that it was about a crazy family, but couldn't remember for the life of me whodunit. Which makes a lot of sense, since the crazy family sends Alleyn on a wild good chase after the actual truth. I was pleased to note, though, that I did find the one "aha!" clue in the midst of all the tarradiddle.6/27/08Inspector Alleyn sifts through the confusing accounts of an eccentric family to get to the bottom of a gruesome death.A strange book to follow along; a lot of people obviously lying for no good reason.
—Anne
There was much to like about this book, with a dotty charming English aristocratic family, and the sharp Scotland Yard Inspector Alleyn. He's the osrt of fellow who picks up a clue the reader should have seen, but didn't quite get. The murder takes place in a smallish apartment with elevator, and so much of the action is really cerebral - whose story talolies, and whose does not. The only annoying theme was Alleyn's constant referring to Insector Fox as "Brer Fox." which is unprofessional and cutesy. I won't give away the ending, except to say that it is manufactured and clumsy. I had the feeling of a well drawn plot, then a vacation, then the author realizing there was a time deadline from the publisher. That's probably unjust, but that is how it seemed to this reader. It could have been much better if the last quarter of the book had been on the same level as the first three quarters.
—William S.
