Alleyn investigates the killing of a Home Secretary
The book begins with a Cabinet meeting at No 10 Downing Street, where the Home Secretary and other ministers are discussing a controversial Bill they are planning to introduce to deal with anarchists. The Home Secretary begins to feel ill during the meeting, alarming the other members of the Cabinet, and decides to go home early.
After being examined by a doctor, it is decided the Home Secretary will go into a nursing home, which was the equivalent of a private hospital at the time, for an operation on his appendix. The operation is a success, yet the patient soon dies. His widow later becomes suspicious and calls the police and eventually the investigation is assigned to Roderick Alleyn.
The Nursing Home Murder was published in 1935, just seven years after Ngaio had first visited England. It was her third detective novel and it appeared only a year after the publication of her first novel, A Man Lay Dead, and second novel, Enter a Murderer.
Alleyn eventually discovers that among the staff in the operating theatre at the time of the operation there were at least three people who might have wanted the Home Secretary dead. This might seem rather far-fetched, but Ngaio explains the circumstances convincingly.
Alleyn is assisted in his investigation by his colleague, Inspector Fox, and his friend, the journalist Nigel Bathgate.
 |
| Patrick Malahide, who portrayed Inspector Alleyn in a TV series |
Her 32 novels featuring Roderick Alleyn later became so popular she was often referred to as a Queen of Crime along with her contemporaries, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham.
In the preface to my copy of an omnibus edition of her first three novels - A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer and The Nursing Home Murder - Ngaio describes how she first came up with the character of Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn.
It was a wet Saturday afternoon and she had been reading a detective story borrowed from a library, although she says she can’t remember whether it was a Christie or a Sayers. By four o’clock, as the afternoon became darker and the rain was still coming down relentlessly, she had finished it.
She wondered whether she could write something similar and braved the rain to go to a stationer’s shop across the street where she bought six exercise books, a pencil and a pencil sharpener. When she got home, she sat down to write what was to be the first of a series of crime novels featuring the gentleman detective Roderick Alleyn.
After The Nursing Home Murder was published in 1935, the reviewer for The Times claimed the novel had transformed the detective story from just a puzzle to a full blown and fascinating novel.
One of Ngaio’s fellow Queens of Crime, Agatha Christie, paid her the compliment of having one of her characters in Murder in Mesopotamia being seen reading The Nursing Home Murder.
I found The Nursing Home Murder very readable and enjoyed the way Ngaio keeps the reader guessing about who murdered the Home Secretary right to the end.
Book One of the Ngaio Marsh Collection, published by Harper, comprises her first three novels including The Nursing Home Murder and is available from:
or
No comments:
Post a Comment