Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead: A Unique Classic Mystery

Book number 46 of 2024

As readers of this blog should know, I’m a fan of classic British mysteries. I have read quite a few Agatha Christie novels and all of Dorothy Sayers’, but until now I had not read anything by Ngaio Marsh. I remember my Mom reading her books way back when, so I decided to start at the beginning and read her first mystery, A Man Lay Dead. I am so glad I did!

First, this book did not strike me as a tentative first effort by an inexperienced author, the way the John Bude’s The Cornish Coast Murder did. All of the characters are real and have multifaceted personalities. The murder itself is very difficult to figure out how it could have been carried out, let alone by whom. And, there is a fun side-trip into a weird conspiracy of Russian assassins!

A Man Lay Dead begins with the narrator, young journalist Nigel Bathgate, traveling to Sir Hubert Handesley’s Frantock House with his older bon vivant cousin, Charles Rankin. Sir Hubert is throwing a house-party where the guests will play a game of “Murder” – one of them will be randomly chosen to “murder” another guest, and the survivors must figure who the guilty party is. The guest list includes, in addition to Nigel and Rankin, Rosamund Grant, “a tall dark woman whose strange uncompromising beauty would be difficult to forget”, Arthur Wilde and his wife, Marjorie, Dr. Foma Tokareff, a Russian, and Angela Grant, Sir Hubert’s niece.

Nigel discovers in short order that his cousin was romantically involved with Miss Grant, as well as Mrs. Wilde. During dinner the first evening at Frantock, Rankin shows everyone an extremely old dagger that he was given by a grateful man he rescued from a crevasse in a Swiss glacier. When he sees it, Tokareff reacts explosively, exclaiming that it belongs to an ancient secret Russian society with a dark and disturbing history. Sir Hubert’s elderly Russian butler, Vassily, just about has a stroke when he sees the dagger. Sir Hubert, an avid collector of knives, immediately offers to buy it, but Rankin turns him down. Arthur Wilde is an archeologist who specializes in ancient weapons, and he verifies the worth of Rankin’s dagger. Sir Hubert even goes so far as to have Rankin write a note bequeathing him the dagger in the event of Rankin’s death.

There follows some bizarre, to my sense, goings on while the guests relax and get to know each other. Apparently, Rankin and Wilde were schoolmates at Eton, and Rankin decides to relive some schoolboy hijinks:

“Let’s de-bag old Arthur,” suggested Rankin, emerging breathless from the hurly-burly. “Come on, Nigel…come on, Hubert.”
“There’s always something wrong with old Charles when he rags,” thought Nigel. But he held the protesting Wilde while his trousers were dragged off, and joined in the laugh when he stood pale and uncomfortable, clutching a hearthrug to his recreant limbs and blinking short-sightedly.
“You’ve smashed my spectacles,” he said.
Marsh, Ngaio. A Man Lay Dead: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #1 (pp. 25-26). Felony & Mayhem Press. Kindle Edition.

Anyway, you can see where this is going: Rankin ends up dead with his precious dagger in his back. Practically every guest has a legitimate motive to kill him, including Nigel, who is his primary beneficiary. Enter the hero of the novel, Detective Inspector Alleyn. He is a very interesting literary character and unique in my experience. He is not an insufferable egotist like Hercule Poirot, nor a near-superhero like Lord Peter Wimsey. He is extremely competent, he has a sense of humor, he’s well-educated (he drops brief Shakespeare quotes at appropriate moments), he seems to be well off financially, but he is not flashy. He is acutely aware of how he must be feared and disliked by all of the guests as he carries out his investigation, and occasionally his mask of dispassion slips. In other words, he’s a real man.

As Nigel says to Alleyn near the end,

“You are an extraordinary creature,” said Nigel suddenly. “You struck me as being as sensitive as any of us just before you made the arrest. Your nerves seemed to be all anyhow. I should have said you hated the whole game. And now, an hour later, you utter inhuman platitudes about types. You are a rum ’un.”

“Unspeakable juvenile! Is this your manner when interviewing the great? Come and dine with me tomorrow.”
Marsh, Ngaio. A Man Lay Dead: Inspector Roderick Alleyn #1 (p. 173). Felony & Mayhem Press. Kindle Edition.

I also admire Marsh’s ability to keep me guessing right up to the last chapter. I was actually feeling somewhat smug, thinking I had solved the mystery about two-thirds of the way into the story, but I was wrong! I highly recommend A Man Lay Dead if you’re a fan of classic British mystery, and I have already downloaded Marsh’s next Inspector Alleyn novel, Enter A Murderer.

Ray Bradbury Megapack – Some Early Gems from a Master

Book number 45 of 2024

One of my all-time favorite authors is Ray Bradbury. Beginning with The Martian Chronicles, which I read when I was in junior high, I fell in love with his imaginative writings. Wildside Press has collected 15 science fiction tales that Bradbury wrote early in his career for pulp magazines, circa 1944 – 1951. While the first few stories aren’t the greatest things he’s written, for $0.99 the collection is still a great bargain. 

Included is a stone-cold Bradbury classic, The Creatures That Time Forgot, the story of a group of humans and their descendants who are stranded on a planet with properties that cause them to live their entire lives in the span of eight days. Born one day, reaching adulthood by the third day, they die of old age on the eighth. Even though it sounds implausible, even for science fiction, Bradbury makes it entirely believable and paints a realistic picture of the struggles a community would undergo to survive under such conditions. 

The collection also includes a novella co-written with Leigh Brackett, Lorelei of the Red Mist. It is a sword and sorcery tale that, to be honest, isn’t very good and is very unrepresentative of Bradbury. Much better is the next story, Zero Hour, which is a short one about an alien invasion that is enabled by small children playing a “game” which opens up an extra-dimensional portal. It is very creepy and could have been an episode from the classic television series, The Twilight Zone.

There is a another rather long story, Pillar of Fire, that shows glimmers of Bradbury’s future greatness. In it, William Lantry wakes up in the year 2349, to find himself “the last dead man in the whole damned world!” In its quest for cleanliness and elimination of risk, humanity immediately cremates anyone who dies. Old graves have been dug up and their human remains incinerated. Lantry’s grave was in the very last cemetery, and he managed to escape his fate. Motivated by hatred of the safe, antiseptic lives humans live now, he tries to reintroduce fear and crime. He goes to a library and asks for a book by Edgar Allen Poe, but his works have been scrubbed, as has H. P. Lovecraft’s (when Lantry asks for a book of Lovecraft, the librarian thinks he means a sex manual!). In this story, one can see the first flickerings of the themes Bradbury would develop in Fahrenheit 451.

While most of the stories in this collection are fair to middling, it is definitely worth shelling out $0.99 if you’re a Bradbury fan. His mordant sense of humor comes through, even if none of the tales has a happy ending. You can also tell that he had been reading a lot on general semantics at the time he was writing them: there are several uses of “referents” and “labels”; one story is even entitled Referent. One last observation – no matter what we imagine the future to be, it will probably be nothing like it. In every single story, at least one character smokes multiple cigarettes. I seriously doubt any astronaut today is a chain smoker!

Simon Fairfax’s 1415 – A Most Satisfying Conclusion

Book number 44 of 2024

Simon Fairfax’s 1415 is the sixth and final book in his A Knight and a Spy series. I have thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself in the medieval world of Sir James de Grispere and his comrades Mark and Cristo. All of the events of the previous five novels come to a head in this thrilling conclusion.

1415 begins where 1414 ended: Jamie is is recovering from the near-fatal poisoning he suffered at the Council of Constance, Germany. As soon as he is able to return to England, he is tasked with infiltrating a possible plot to overthrow King Henry V. Henry would like to wage war in France and reestablish English rule there, but he is threatened with possible rebellion at home. Jamie and Mark travel across the channel to acquire ships for Henry’s planned invasion, and they foil a plot to destroy the fleet.

Returning to London, Jamie, his squire Geoffrey, Cristo, and Mark are sent north to shadow a small force that is escorting Murdoch Stewart, who is going to be exchanged for Henry Percy, being held by the Scots. Stewart’s escort is attacked, and he escapes. Jamie teams up with Sir Ralph Pudsey to recapture Stewart. Jamie then continues north to reunite with his old mentor, Sir Robert de Umfraville. Umfraville’s name has been mentioned by conspirators planning to rebel against Henry and install Sir Edmund Mortimer as king. I have to admit, at this point I’m like Mark who laments, “Tell me all again, for I’m findin’ it right complicated.” (p. 184)

Jamie and his friends join de Umfraville’s and Sir Roger Neville’s forces to fight a Scottish raiding army, and they soundly defeat them at the Battle of Yeavering. Despite the Scots outnumbering the English 10 to 1, the English archers prove to be the deciding factor.

Jamie, Geoffrey, Mark, and Cristo sail back to Porchester, where Henry is preparing his massive forces to invade France. Sir Richard Whittington sends Jamie on an emergency mission to convince Mortimer that his rebellion has fallen apart, and he must come clean to Henry. He does, and the leaders of the rebellion are tried and executed. So ends Part One!

Part Two concerns the English siege of Harfluer. Due to the marshy land around the towns and appalling camp hygiene, the English troops are succumbing to the “bloody flux” (dysentery). The town is slowly being destroyed by the constant bombardment from the English cannons. The indecisive French dauphin won’t send rescue forces, so Harfleur is in dire straits. Cristo is an invaluable resource as he gathers intelligence on the French positions. He even averts a disaster, raising the alarm when the French attack the English camp while they are have a funeral mass for Sir Richard Courtenay, Bishop of Norwich, who succumbed to dysentery. The attack is repelled, but the camp conditions continue to worsen.

After a pitched battle involving Jamie and Mark, Harfleur surrenders to the English, and Henry sends a challenge to the decadent dauphin: face me in one-on-one combat to decide the outcome of this war and end the bloodshed of innocent French and English people.

Part Three is devoted to one of the most famous conflicts in European history: the Battle of Agincourt. After weeks of slogging through rain and playing cat and mouse with the French, the exhausted English army finally faces their opponents at Agincourt. Fairfax does an excellent job of conveying just how overwhelming the odds were in favor of a French victory. They outnumbered the English 10 to 1, and they were so confident of their overwhelming force, that they placed their crossbowmen to their rear. This was a fatal mistake, as this allowed the English archers to advance unharmed into shooting range. Once in position, the archers were able to rain death down upon the French men at arms.

Fairfax also makes a good case that Henry’s victory was due to divine intervention. There were so many times he could have lost everything, yet events always seemed to work in his favor.

Having read all six volumes of the A Knight and A Spy series (2660 pages!), I can say that I really enjoyed getting to know Jamie, Mark, Cristo, and their medieval world. Life was very different then, and Fairfax does a great job describing what it was like, down to the smallest detail. James de Grispere matures from a naïve young squire into a trusted (and deadly) household knight of the king of England. Along the way, he never neglects his friends, and they have some fantastic adventures. It’s hard to believe they are all based on actual historical events. If Amazon or Netflix had any sense, they would produce an A Knight and a Spy miniseries.

I highly recommend the A Knight and A Spy series if you like historical fiction with lots of action. And if you do decide to take the plunge, make sure you begin with the first volume, 1410. 

P. G. Wodehouse’s Full Moon: Another Crisis Averted at Blandings Castle

Book number 43 of 2024

Whenever I need a restorative read, I turn to the master of comedy: P. G. Wodehouse. My favorite books of his are set at Blandings Castle, the ancestral home of the dotty Lord Clarence Emsworth, his gaggle of formidable sisters, and of course, The Empress of Blandings – Lord Emsworth’s prize-winning pig. His younger son, Freddie Threepwood usually shows up, and there are always interesting guests as well as lovestruck young couples facing insuperable hurdles to their happiness. I have already read and reviewed another Blandings Castle novel, Uncle Fred In The Springtime.

In Full Moon, Clarence’s brother, Galahad (who goes by Gally) is the guardian angel of the young lovers. One couple is Bill Lister, affectionately called “Blister” by Freddie, and Prudence Garland, daughter of Dora Garland, a sister of Clarence’s. Bill is an aspiring London artist with an unfortunate face like a gorilla, but Prudence loves him dearly and plans to elope with him. Her mother gets wind of things when she answers the telephone, and Bill, thinking Prudence has answered, calls her his “dream rabbit”. Prudence is quickly shipped off to Blandings for her safety. Did I mention Blister is Gally’s godson, and he will do anything in his power to bring him and Prudence together?

Meanwhile, Freddie, who has married American Niagara (“Aggie”) Donaldson, of Donaldson Dog-Joy dog biscuit fame, is back in England to drum up business for his father-in-law’s company across the pond. He would also like to have the young American millionaire Tipton Plimsoll agree to carry Donaldson in his chain of supermarkets. To wine and dine Tipton, Freddie invites him to Blandings Castle to spend a few days enjoying the country air. Tipton agrees, because he has been partying a little too hard in the city, to the point where every time he tries to have a drink, he sees a man with a gorilla-like face out of the corner of his eye (you can see where this is heading). Once ensconced at Blandings, Tipton meets Veronica Wedge, the stunningly beautiful yet undeniably dim daughter of Colonel Egbert and Hermione Wedge. Hermione is another one of Clarence and Gally’s sisters, and, according to Wodehouse, looks just like a cook, which will lead to some humorous encounters. The Wedges are thrilled that their daughter seems to have captured the heart of one of the wealthiest young men in America. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to jealousy.

Galahad arrives at Blandings with Blister in tow, because Clarence wanted to have a portrait painted of his beloved pig, The Empress of Blandings. Gally hopes to get Bill and Prudence together, despite her exile at Blandings, by having Bill paint the portrait. Of course, nothing is easy or straightforward in Wodehouse land, and many hilarious encounters with imposters and cases of mistaken identity occur.

Clarence, Lord Emsworth, is one of Wodehouse’s greatest characters. All he wants from life is to be left alone to raise his prize-winning pig. Unfortunately, he is extremely absent-minded. As Colonel Wedge explains to his wife,

“Vagueness?” Colonel Wedge came of a long line of bluff military men who called spades spades. He would have none of these polite euphemisms. “It isn’t vagueness. It’s sheer gibbering lunacy. The fact is, old girl, we’ve got to face it, Clarence is dotty. He was dotty when I married you, twenty-four years ago, and been getting dottier and dottier ever since. Where do you think I found him just now? Down at the pigsty. I noticed something hanging over the rail, and thought the pig man must have left his overalls there, and then it suddenly reared itself up like a cobra and said ‘Ah, Egbert.’ Gave me a nasty shock. I nearly swallowed my cigar. Questioned as to what the deuce he was playing at, he said he was listening to his pig.”

And here is Clarence, trying to recall Tipton Plimsoll’s name:

“Going out for a walk, Mr. Ah?” he said.
Tipton said that he was, adding in a rather defensive way that it was such a swell night.
“Beautiful,” agreed Lord Emsworth, and then, for he was a man who always liked to make his meaning quite clear, added, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. There is a moon,” he went on, directing his young friend’s attention to this added attraction with a wave of the hand.
Tipton said he had noticed the moon.
“Bright,” said Lord Emsworth.
“Very bright,” said Tipton.
“Very bright, indeed,” said Lord Emsworth. “Oh, extremely bright. Are you,” he asked, changing the subject, “interested in pigs, Mr. Er – Ah – Umph?”
“Plimsoll,” said Tipton.
“Pigs,” said Lord Emsworth, raising his voice a little and enunciating the word more distinctly.
Plimsoll explained that what he had been intending to convey was that his name was Plimsoll.
“Oh, is it?” said Lord Emsworth, and paused awhile in thought. He had a vague recollection that someone had once told him to do something – what, he could not at the moment recall – about someone of that name. “Well, as I was about to say, I am just going down to listen to my pig.”

What Lord Emsworth was supposed to do was NOT tell Tipton that Freddie was once engaged to Veronica Wedge, to avoid stirring up any jealousy in Tipton. Of course, he mixes up this directive from Col. Wedge, and hilarity ensues. Fortunately for all involved, Uncle Galahad is able to straighten things out and set both couples on their way to wedded bliss.

Full Moon is one of Wodehouse’s best novels, and I heartily recommend it to anyone wanting a good laugh. The reader can see the comedic complications coming a mile away, but that doesn’t lessen the delight he or she has when they are described in Wodehouse’s inimitable style. I wish we could all visit Blandings Castle, where there is always a whisky and soda for the asking, and the only blots are disapproving aunts!