Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay

A classic mystery novel set in and around the Northern Line

The British Library Crime Classics
edition of Murder Underground 

Murder Underground, the first detective novel by Mavis Doriel Hay, is underpinned by a very clever plot. It has a satisfying ending and enjoyable resolution scenes that wrap up the individual stories of the characters and I found it to be a very good read.

First published in 1934, during the Golden Age of British crime fiction, the setting for this classic mystery novel is the Northern Line of the underground in London.

When Miss Pongleton, who is considered by others to be a tiresome old spinster, is found murdered on the stairs at Belsize Park Station, her fellow boarders at the Frampton Hotel are not exactly overwhelmed by grief, but they all have their theories about the identity of her murderer.

They help to unravel the mystery of who killed ‘Pongle’ with the help of Tuppy the terrier, the victim’s dog, and each play their part in the events that lead to the dramatic conclusion.

There is of course an official police investigation, led by Inspector Caird, but he is in the background for most of the story and it is the amateur sleuths at the Frampton Hotel who unearth the clues and finally make sense of the different pieces of the puzzle.

Hay was born in February 1894 in Potters Bar in Middlesex. She attended St Hilda’s College in Oxford from 1913 to 1916. She published three mystery novels within three years in the 1930s, Murder Underground, Death on the Cherwell and The Santa Klaus Murder. Her second novel, Death on the Cherwell, appeared during the same year as Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers and coincidentally both novels were set in women’s colleges in Oxford.

After Murder Underground was published, Dorothy L Sayers wrote a review in the Sunday Times in 1934, saying: ‘This detective novel is much more than interesting. The numerous characters are well differentiated, and include one of the most feckless, exasperating, and lifelike literary men that ever confused a trail.’

Like Dorothy L Sayers, Mavis attended Oxford before women were allowed to graduate. She was interested in the industries and handicrafts of rural Britain and, after leaving university, she was sponsored by the Agricultural Economics Research Institute of Oxford University to collaborate with Helen Fitzrandolph on a series of works surveying the rural industries. Mavis was also interested in quilting and published several books on crafts.

She married Helen Fitzrandolph’s brother, Archibald Menzies Fitzrandolph, in 1929. He was killed in a flying accident during World War II. Mavis Doriel Hay died in 1979 at the age of 85.

Eighty years after it was first published, Murder Underground was republished by British Library Crime Classics in 2014. In his introduction to the new edition of the novel, crime writer Stephen Booth said that Mavis Doriel Hay had been ‘unjustifiably overlooked.’ He also bemoaned the fact that her third detective novel, The Santa Klaus Murder, published in 1936, was sadly her last, and wondered whether the approach of World War II was the reason for this.

I am sure that lovers of classic crime novels will be glad to have the opportunity to get to know this author now. I have to admit that I found Murder Underground to be a slow starter, but I kept in mind the fact that it was Mavis’s first novel.

I thought she was better at portraying the female characters, such as Beryl, Betty and Cissie, than the leading males, such as the hapless Basil, who was referred to by Dorothy L Sayers in her review, or Beryl’s amiable, but ineffectual, fiancé, Gerry.

Nevertheless, I would recommend Murder Underground to other readers as an excellent example of a whodunit.

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Strong Poison

Author departs from tradition by letting her detective fall in love

Strong Poison is the fifth of
Dorothy L Sayers's Wimsey novels

Dorothy L Sayers allows her noble sleuth to have a love interest in Strong Poison, the fifth novel she wrote featuring the exploits of amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey.

The author introduces the character of Harriet Vane, a crime novelist, who, like Wimsey, is Oxford educated and has had an unhappy time romantically.

When Wimsey sees Harriet Vane for the first time, she is in the dock, accused of the murder of her ex-lover, the poet Philip Boyes.

Strong Poison, which was published in 1930, is considered to be a major departure for a Golden Age mystery as it shows the detective falling in love with a woman accused of the murder that is central to the plot.

Dorothy L Sayers fans have speculated that the writer modelled Harriet Vane on herself. The writer had suffered a romantic disappointment and by creating the long-drawn-out romance between Harriet Vane and Wimsey, which was to run through four novels, it allowed her to have a vicarious affair with the detective herself, far-fetched though this might seem now.

Dorothy had been very impressed with the novel Trent’s Last Case by E C Bentley, published in 1913. In the story, the detective, Philip Trent, falls in love with the wife of the murder victim.

Right until the end of the novel the reader does not know for certain that the wife is not the murderer. E C Bentley’s novel was intended as a send up of the classic crime story and it also involves the hero detective identifying the wrong person as the murderer close to the end of the story, completely at odds with the conventions of the genre. But Dorothy, along with many other readers, really liked the novel and went on record as saying that Bentley’s novel ‘holds a very special place in the history of detective fiction.’

In Strong Poison, the victim, Harriet’s ex-lover Philip Boyes, has died from arsenic poisoning. He has attempted to engineer a reconciliation with Harriet on the night of his death and she has given him a cup of coffee while listening to what he had to say. She is accused of the murder because she is found to have bought poison under an assumed name. She has claimed this was to test one of the plot points in the crime novel she is currently writing.

Sayers herself had suffered
a romantic disappointment

Fortunately, the trial results in a hung jury and the judge has to order a retrial. With no time to lose, Wimsey visits Harriet in prison to tell her he is convinced of her innocence and is determined to catch the real murderer. He also asks her to marry him, but she turns him down politely.

The jury has failed to return a unanimous verdict because one person sitting on it could not bring herself to believe in Harriet’s guilt. This is Miss Katharine Climpson, a spinster who, coincidentally, sometimes works for Wimsey by carrying out inquiries and undercover work because she has to live in difficult financial circumstances and needs to earn some money.

Wimsey deploys her to gather evidence for his inquiry and, in one hilarious scene, she is obliged to pose as a medium and hold a séance to obtain the information he needs. Miss Climpson first appeared doing undercover work for Wimsey in the novel, Unnatural Death, two years before Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, also a spinster with a talent for detection, was introduced on the crime fiction scene.

As well as being an intriguing mystery, Strong Poison explores some of the issues of the time, such as sex before marriage and the double standards that were applied to the behaviour of men and women. The novel is intricately plotted and written in a very entertaining style and I would highly recommend that you read it. 

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Don’t delay, start writing straight away!

How to avoid doing things that will postpone your literary success

Not having the ideal office chair should not
stop you putting pen to paper

People talk a lot about 'writer’s block' and how it can hold up a work in progress, but in my experience a far more dangerous thing to watch out for is 'writer's delay'. 

Not getting on with writing is often called procrastination, but I don’t like that label as it implies there is something deliberate about doing things to avoid writing, such as stopping to tidy your office, or sharpening all your pencils, or going on social media.

Many ‘How to Write’ books start with advice about finding a finding a suitable place in your house to write. Then there will be suggestions about what IT equipment you should have installed and many paragraphs will be devoted to the importance of choosing a comfortable chair.

I’m not saying any of these things aren’t helpful, but I don’t think they should stop you getting on with your writing if you already have some good ideas for a novel or a short story.

My advice would be to get your ideas on paper as quickly as possible. You can always type them up later and then revise what you have written as many times as you need to.

I recently read a book about how to write a crime novel that had several pages at the beginning dedicated to the importance of attending writers’ conferences, just to make you feel more like a writer!

I think that is a bad idea as it will just hold you up from starting to write. All you really need in order to get going are some strong ideas and a notebook and pen so that you can write the ideas down as soon as they occur to you. You should carry the notebook with you everywhere and note the ideas as quickly as you can while they are still fresh in your mind.

The other thing you need to do is to decide what genre your proposed novel or story belongs in and read some examples written by successful authors.

Make sure you carry a notebook
and pen or pencil at all times  

But you may well be a regular reader of the genre already, as most writers tend to want to write a book or short story of the sort they enjoy reading themselves. If you are already familiar with the genre, you can get straight on with writing. The main thing is to be clear about what type of fiction you are attempting to write before you start.

It is hopeless to try to write a detective novel, or a Regency romance, if you don’t ever read that type of book. If you write the sort of book that you enjoy reading yourself, you will already unconsciously have picked up the rules and conventions of the genre and will have a feel for what is right and what isn’t, as you write your own.

The plot of a book never comes to you fully formed, but you will get ideas for characters and settings as you go along and will need to make a note of everything that occurs to you straight away.

It can all be woven into a plot for a book with a beginning, middle and end and, hopefully, a satisfying conclusion for the reader, later on.

I sometimes get ideas for the novel I am currently working on as I am waking up in the morning. If it is the weekend, it is tempting to turn over and go back to sleep, and if it is a week day, you might be under time pressure to get up and start your day. But if you can possibly spare a few minutes after you have woken up, it is a good idea to write your ideas down in your notebook before they are lost to you for ever.

Another thing I find useful is a project book with coloured tabs separating the sections, so I can list in an organised way all the information about characters, setting, plot and themes that have occurred to me randomly and been jotted down in my notebook.

Of course, it’s nice to set up a smart, well-equipped writer’s office with a lovely, comfortable chair to sit in, but it should not be at the expense of getting on with your novel or short story.

It will probably be obvious where you will find peace and quiet in your house to write and you can make do with just the basic equipment and stationery you already have, to begin with. If you later find your chair is uncomfortable, just swap it with another one from somewhere else in your house.

Prolific and successful writers, such as Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, probably didn’t waste a second thinking about their chairs, but just got on with writing all those books.

You could take a leaf out of the great Andrea
Camilleri's book and write a letter to yourself

If you do suffer from writer’s block after you have started the first draft of your novel, your project book, with its information about plot, setting, characters and themes, should provide you with the inspiration you need to keep on writing.

Another trick I have heard of is to just write anything you can think of on to the blank page to get yourself going, even if it is a couple of lines of poetry, or a paragraph of description that has no real connection with the story you are working on.

You could also take a tip from the great Italian crime writer, Andrea Camilleri, which I once read about in one of his Inspector Montalbano novels, The Potter's Field. Montalbano has reached deadlock in a case and can’t see any way forward, so he sits down and writes himself a letter, taking himself to task for his obtuseness and what he feels he has done wrong during his investigation.

You could write to yourself along the same lines and say: ‘Dear author, What is the connection between these two characters? Who has properties overlooking the field where the body was found and has your detective been to see them all yet? What would your protagonist usually do at this time of the day? How can you get him or her further forward with what they are trying to achieve?’ Usually, the answers you think of will help you get going with your story again.

But whatever you do, don’t let trivial things delay you from starting to write in the first place! You can wait until you have made some money from your first novel or short story before you buy yourself a smart writer’s chair!

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100 Must-Read Crime Novels

A unique selection of stunning examples of the genre

This handy guide by Richard Shephard and Nick Rennison provides a treat for all lovers of detective fiction by choosing 100 books to give readers an overview of the rich and diverse crime writing that has been produced over the years.

The authors did not intend to provide a list of the 100 best crime novels because of the difficulty of comparing books written in different eras and with varied intentions.

An invaluable guide for beginners and 
established fans of the crime fiction genre

They aimed to provide a book that would be useful as a starting point for readers wanting to explore the genre. Their selections are arranged A to Z by author and describe the plot of the novel without spoiling it for prospective readers. They include information about the authors and where they are placed in the history of crime fiction.

At the end of each entry there is a Read On list with suggestions of books to read by stylistically similar authors. Most authors have one entry only, but Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been allowed two entries, because they have been judged so important to the genre. 

There is also a brief history of crime fiction and lists of the winners of the Edgar Award and the CWA Golden Dagger Award right from the beginning.

The book selects many well-known crime writers but there are also some names that are less familiar. E C Bentley has an entry for his ground-breaking 1913 novel, Trent’s Last Case. Lawyer Michael Gilbert has been chosen for his 1950 legal mystery Smallbone Deceased and Cyril Hare, who was a judge in real life, for his legal mystery When the Wind Blows, published in 1949.

Francis Iles, with Malice Aforethought, and Michael Innes, with Hamlet Revenge! have both been chosen for novels written in the 1930s.

Having to pick just one Dorothy L Sayers novel, it is fascinating to see that  they went for The Nine Tailors, published in 1934.  For Josephine Tey, they picked her 1948 novel, The Franchise Affair.

Ruth Rendell manages to get two entries, both as herself with An Unkindness of Ravens (1985) and as Barbara Vine, with A Fatal Inversion (1987).

European writers are represented with entries on Gaston Leroux, Georges Simenon, Henning Mankell and Manuel Vasquex Montalban.

American writers featured include Eric Ambler, Dashiell Hammett, Donna Leon and Vera Caspary.

This guide offers readers an invaluable introduction to authors they may never have tried before but might grow to love.

100 Must-Read Crime Novels is packed with useful book suggestions and fascinating information for crime fiction fans.

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The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Edgar Allan Poe invented the fictional detective in April 1841

The first detective story by the American writer Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue, was published in a magazine 180 years ago this month.

Although Poe himself referred to it as one of his ‘tales of ratiocination’, the work has since been hailed as the first modern detective story.

The first story about amateur
sleuth C Auguste Dupin

Poe’s fictional amateur detective, C Auguste Dupin, solves the savage murder of two women living in a house in the Rue Morgue in Paris, demonstrating many of the traits which were to become literary conventions in stories about subsequent fictional detectives, such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

The creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, praised Dupin as ‘the best detective in fiction’.

The murders in Poe’s first detective story appear to have been committed in a locked room on the fourth floor of an otherwise uninhabited house. Neighbours hearing the agonised screams of the women victims break into the house, but find only two dead bodies and no other person anywhere in the property.

For the very first time, the reader is told that the local police are completely baffled.

The story begins with the unnamed narrator of the story first meeting Dupin when they are both trying to obtain the same rare book.

The two men become friends and decide to share a rented property together in Paris.

The narrator is constantly amazed by Dupin’s brilliance and powers of deduction. In one scene, Dupin is able to work out what his friend is thinking and answer him before he has even asked a question.

When the two men read about the murders in the newspaper, Dupin is immediately interested and gets permission from the police to visit the house and assess the crime scene in the locked room.

From what Dupin observes there he is able to work out what has happened and who is responsible for the murders. He convinces the police to release the man they have mistakenly arrested and finally explains to the narrator how he has solved the mystery from the clues he observed at the crime scene.

Poe wrote his first detective story at the age of 32 and was paid $56 for the publication rights by Graham’s Magazine, based in Philadelphia. It appeared in the April 1841 edition and became the prototype for many future stories featuring fictional detectives.

Poe's narrator technique was taken up by Conan Doyle. His Dr Watson narrated the circumstances surrounding the cases solved by Sherlock Holmes and marvelled at the amazing powers of deduction of the friend with whom he shared rented rooms. The first story, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887.

Captain Hastings began narrating stories about the cases solved by Hercule Poirot in The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, published in 1920.

There were just three Dupin short stories, but the Mystery Writers of America still honour Edgar Allan Poe annually by presenting the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.

Detective novelist Dorothy L Sayers has described the three Dupin stories as ‘almost a complete manual of detective theory and practice.’

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and the two other Dupin stories were republished in a single volume by Vintage Classics in 2009. 

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The Haunted Hotel

Is this a ghost story or is it a crime novel?

My 2015 edition of The Haunted 
Hotel, first published in 1878

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, published in 1868, has been talked of as the first English detective novel as it established many of the ground rules of the modern genre. There is a detective, Sergeant Cuff, a country house setting, false suspects and a final twist in the plot.

Wilkie Collins wrote The Haunted Hotel ten years after The Moonstone was published. I was delighted recently when I received a copy of The Haunted Hotel as a present because I wondered how closely it would resemble a detective story, which is my favourite genre. I was also intrigued because a lot of the story takes place in Venice, a city that I love.

Collins was known for writing sensation novels, or sensation fiction, which was at the peak of its popularity in the 1860s and 1870s. His novel, The Woman in White, published in 1860, is one of the finest examples of sensation fiction, so called because it was written to play on the nerves and excite the senses of the reader.

In The Haunted Hotel, Collins makes the reader think he is going to write a novel that deals with the supernatural, as very early in the book questions are raised about being able to predict the future and being able to sense evil in a room.

The story begins with a London doctor being visited by a foreign Countess who is desperate for him to tell her whether she is evil, or insane. She is about to marry a nobleman, Lord Montbarry, but has discovered that he was engaged to another woman when he proposed to her, who has subsequently released him from the engagement.

The Countess says she has been assured the other woman did not blame her for the break-up of her relationship with Lord Montbarry and that the true course of events had been explained to her. But she says that when she eventually met his former fiancée and saw the other woman’s eyes upon her she turned ‘cold from head to foot’ and experienced great fear.

Wilkie Collins is best known for
his 1859 novel The Woman in White

After the marriage has taken place and the couple are away on their honeymoon, the story is told from the point of view of the jilted woman, Agnes, who is perceived by all her friends as a kind, loving, good person.

Mrs Ferrari, a woman Agnes has known since childhood, then comes to her for help. She is married to an Italian courier who desperately needs work. She asks Agnes to recommend her husband to a newly married couple who are about to tour Italy. When Agnes discovers the couple are Lord and Lady Montbarry, she is reluctant to intervene, but out of sympathy for the woman she eventually agrees that the courier can mention her name to help him secure the job.

Mr Ferrari accompanies the newlyweds to Italy while Agnes goes to stay with friends in Ireland.

On her return to London she receives the news from Mrs Ferrari that the courier’s letters have stopped coming and that no one has seen or heard of him for weeks.

Then Mrs Ferrari receives a bizarre letter. It contains a £1000 note and a piece of paper with the words: ‘To console you for the loss of your husband.’

A few days later, Lord Montbarry’s brother, Henry Westwick, calls to see Agnes to break the news to her that Lord Montbarry has died of bronchitis in the Venetian palazzo where he had been staying.

Collins makes it seem inevitable that all the protagonists will meet again in Venice at some stage in the future. The palace where Lord Montbarry died is converted into an hotel and his brother, Henry, buys shares in it.

Later, friends of Agnes invite her on a trip to Italy with them and plan to visit Venice.

Henry’s sister and brother both separately visit the newly converted hotel that their brother has invested in and feel ill after staying in the best room, number 14, where they smell a foul odour. It turns out to be the room where Lord Montbarry died.

Events conspire to have Agnes allocated to that room when she arrives at the hotel with her party. The sinister Countess, who also happens to have returned to Venice is staying at the Hotel Danieli, but when she discovers that Agnes is staying at the newly converted palace she moves into the hotel.

Agnes then endures a night of horror in the room where Lord Montbarry died. At this point I am still wondering if this is a ghost story, or a tale about the supernatural.

There is no detective in the novel, but Lord Montbarry’s brother, Henry Westwick, sets out to find out what has taken place. He makes a discovery in the room above room number 14 that helps lead him to the truth.

A portrait of Wilkie Collins by
John Everett Millais

This is the room in the old palace that had been occupied by Baron Rivar, the brother of the Countess, who had enjoyed making chemical experiments.

The sinister Countess has died during the night of a ruptured blood vessel in the brain, but she leaves an unfinished play that provides Henry with clues to the fate of the missing Italian courier.

My conclusion is that Wilkie Collins did write a crime story after all. There was the sudden death of Lord Montbarry, whose life was insured for £10000 pounds in favour of his widow, the sinister Countess. The insurance company investigates the death but can find nothing to suggest it was not natural causes. The Italian courier disappears mysteriously. The amateur detective, Henry Westwick, discovers the truth when he visits the room above number 14 and reads a half finished play by the Countess, which helps him finally discover what happened to his brother..

The Haunted Hotel has many of the ingredients of a crime novel and the truth is not revealed until the end of the novel in the tradition of the genre. I can definitely recommend it to crime fiction fans.

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(The Millais portrait of Wilkie Collins hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London)

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Mystery Mile

Sinister goings on in a remote country house on the Suffolk coast

The gentleman sleuth Albert Campion takes centre stage in Mystery Mile, the second novel by Margery Allingham to feature him as a character, which was first published in 1930.

Campion appeared in The Crime at Black Dudley, published in 1929, as a minor character, although he played his part, along with the other young guests at the country house party, when the host’s uncle is found dead and a sinister gang of criminals take over the building and hold them hostage.

The edition reissued by Vintage in 2015

But he is involved in the action right from the beginning in Mystery Mile by saving the life of an American judge on board a luxury liner crossing the Atlantic, seemingly by accident.

The judge, Crowdy Lobbett, is being targeted by a major criminal, known as Simister, and his ruthless associates. Several people in the judge’s circle have already died before he boards the ship with his son and daughter to flee to England where he hopes to be safer.

But after a car drives into the hotel where Judge Lobbett is staying in London, his son, Marlowe, tracks down Campion to ask for his help.

Campion offers the family sanctuary at a remote country house owned by two of his friends, a brother and sister, Giles and Biddy Paget.

The house is in Mystery Mile, a small village on the Suffolk coast, which is joined to the mainland only by a long narrow road, making it almost an island and difficult for non residents to access.

But on their first night in the house the local rector kills himself in a gruesome manner, leaving a note and some mysterious clues for Campion and his friends.

Then the judge vanishes while exploring the maze in the garden and his clothes are later found in the sea. And Biddy disappears after leaving the house to walk the few yards to the village post office.

After being tipped off by a criminal friend of Campion’s that she is being held in a house in London, the young men in the party launch a daring rescue bid.

There is plenty of fighting and some nasty injuries, but they manage to rescue Biddy. It then becomes a race against time to keep Simister and his gang of men at bay until they can pinpoint the identity of the criminal mastermind himself and deal with him once and for all.

Peter Davison (right) played Campion in the
BBC TV series, with Brian Glover (left) as Lugg

Very much a book of its time, Mystery Mile reminded me a little of Agatha Christie’s second novel, The Secret Adversary, which was published in 1922.

Margery, like Agatha, was dubbed a Queen of Crime during the Golden Age of detective fiction. Her first two novels both fall more into the suspense category than that of the cosy English crime novel. But she never loses sight of the basic rules of the classic detective story and keeps the reader guessing right to the end.

Margery’s setting for the old manor house, Mystery Mile, a village that is practically an island, was based on Mersea Island in Essex where she had spent time in her youth.

The story was adapted for television by the BBC in the 1990s, as the final episode of the second series of Campion, which starred Peter Davison as Albert Campion, Brian Glover as his manservant Magersfontein Lugg and Andrew Burt as his policeman friend Stanislaus Oates.

The novel was reissued in 2015 by Vintage, which is part of the Penguin Random House Group.

Although it is nearly 100 years since Mystery Mile was written I think it is a gripping story and well worth reading.

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Ngaio Marsh’s enduring legacy

Talented New Zealander contributed to art, the theatre and crime writing

Ngaio Marsh pictured in 1935, 
early in her writing career

One of the four Queens of Crime during the Golden Age of detective fiction, Ngaio Marsh, died on this day – 18 February – in 1982 in her native New Zealand.

Her 32nd and final crime novel, Light Thickens, was completed only a few weeks before her death. The story revolves around one of her greatest theatrical passions, Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.

Ngaio began writing detective novels in 1931 after moving to London to start up an interior decorating business. She has written that the idea for her first crime novel, A Man Lay Dead, came to her when she was living in a basement flat off Sloane Square.

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 Marsh describes how she 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 couldn’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.

She sat down to write what was to be the first of a series of 32 crime novels featuring the gentleman detective Roderick Alleyn.

Along with Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers she was to dominate the genre of crime fiction for the next 50 years with her novels and numerous short stories.

With Marsh, Margery Allingham (left), Agatha Christie and
Dorothy L Sayers were the Queens of Crime

All her novels feature Alleyn, who works for the Metropolitan Police in London even though he is the younger brother of a baronet, and several are set in the world of the theatre, which Ngaio knew well as an actress, director and playwright.

After leaving school she had studied painting before joining a touring theatre company. She became a member of an art association in New Zealand and continued to exhibit her paintings with them from the 1920s onwards.

Her hero detective Alleyn was named after an Elizabethan actor, Edward Alleyn, and Ngaio allows him to meet and fall in love with an artist, Agatha Troy, in her 1938 novel, Artists in Crime.

She directed many productions of Shakespeare’s plays in New Zealand and Australia and the 430-seat Ngaio Marsh Theatre at the University of Canterbury is named in her honour.

Patrick Malahide (centre) starred in a BBC
adaptation of Marsh's Alleyn novels

In 1948 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services in connection with drama and literature in New Zealand. She became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts in the 1966 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Ngaio’s autobiography, Black Beech and Honeydew was published in 1965. She was inducted into the Detection Club in 1974 and received the Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement as a detective novelist from the Mystery Writers of America in 1978.

Ngaio died in her home town of Christchurch and was buried at the Church of the Holy Innocents, Mount Peel.

The Ngaio Marsh Award is given annually to the writer of the best New Zealand mystery, crime or thriller novel. Her home in Christchurch is now a museum and displays her collection of antiques. On her desk lies a fountain pen filled with green ink, which was her long time writing tool.

Ngaio Marsh’s 32 crime novels are available in a variety of formats. You can find many of them at:  or

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Enter a Queen of Crime from New Zealand

 

How Ngaio Marsh first started writing crime stories

Ngaio Marsh in a picture thought to
have been taken in around 1935

Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh, a New Zealand writer and theatre director, wrote 32 detective novels featuring Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective working for the Metropolitan Police in London.

She became known as one of the Queens of Crime, sharing the distinction with the English writers Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Margery Allingham.

Agatha Christie led the way with The Mysterious Affair at Styles, published in 1920. Then came Dorothy L Sayers with Whose Body? published in 1923, followed by Margery Allingham with The Crime at Black Dudley, published in 1929.

Ngaio Marsh was born and educated in Christchurch New Zealand and studied painting before joining a touring theatre company as an actress. She divided her time between New Zealand and the UK from 1928 onwards, when she started up an interior decorating business in Knightsbridge, London.

The idea for her first crime novel, A Man Lay Dead, came to her in 1931 when she was living in a basement flat off Sloane Square.

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 Marsh writes about how she came up with the character of Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn.

It was a wet Saturday afternoon in 1931 and she had been reading a detective story borrowed from a library, although she couldn’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 idly whether she had it in her to write something similar.

The Ngaio Marsh Collection,
Book 1, published by Harper

Then she braved going out in the rain to a stationer’s shop across the street where she bought six exercise books, a pencil and a pencil sharpener. And that is how the writing career of the fourth Queen of Crime from New Zealand began.

With many eccentric detectives already operating at the time, such as Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey, Ngaio decided to opt for a professional policeman, with a background resembling that of some of the friends she had made in England.

Revealing her interest in the theatre, she chose the surname of an Elizabethan actor called Edward Alleyn, gave him the Christian name Roderick, inspired by a recent visit to Scotland, opened an exercise book, sharpened her pencil and began to write.

In A Man Lay Dead, Inspector Alleyn is asked to investigate the murder of a guest during a country house party. The host had suggested they play the Murder Game, which at the time was very popular with guests at weekend parties, but when the lights go up it is discovered that the victim is dead for real.

Alleyn arrives at Frantock ‘a delightful old brick house’, views the corpse, interviews the guests and gathers evidence with his team of police officers,

He enlists the help of one of the guests, a young journalist called Nigel Bathgate, as his ‘Watson’.

Bathgate later becomes a friend of the detective and appears in several of Ngaio’s 32 Inspector Alleyn novels.

The mystery centres round a valuable Russian dagger, which ends up in the back of the corpse, a disappearing Russian butler, a criminal gang of Russians in London and the victim’s unfortunate habit of philandering.

Alleyn picks up on the smallest of clues, such as a button from a glove and a trace of face powder on a man’s suit. He eventually tricks the murderer into giving himself away.

A Man Lay Dead was first published in 1934. It is now available in a variety of formats.

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Setting the Scene

Use your memories to help you write with assurance

Many crime writers believe the setting is one of the most important elements in a novel and that it almost becomes an additional character in the story.

The fishing village of Marina di Puolo gave me
the idea for my novel, The Shooting in Sorrento

Whether it is a country house in the case of Golden Age novels, a big city such as London or Edinburgh, or the island of Sicily, as in the novels of Andrea Camilleri, where the crime takes place has a big impact on the story and the investigation that follows.

A lot of writers become inspired by a particular place they have visited and their minds immediately start inventing a mystery to happen there.

When I interviewed the crime writer P D James in the 1990s she told me that her novels were almost always inspired by somewhere she had visited.

If you are a new writer you should try to set a story in a place you know well so that you can describe it convincingly and be accurate with the geography. Your murderer should be able to get from one place to another in a realistic amount of time, otherwise readers who also know the location will feel let down.

It is tempting to choose a glamorous setting for your book so that readers can become armchair travellers and enjoy visiting the sights along with your detective.

I was intrigued by the gated entrance to some
caves just outside Marina di Puolo

But many writers have picked abattoirs, factories, power stations and crime ridden inner city housing estates. As long as they have really known and understood their location, they have been able to use it effectively.

Wherever you decide to set your novel, you must visit it and get to know it well so that you can present it authentically.

There are exceptions, of course. I have read that H R F Keating wrote an entire series of books set in India, featuring his character, Inspector Ghote, an Indian police officer, and yet the writer himself had never been to the country, but had done all his research from maps and books.

But on the whole, it is better to know a setting well to be able to describe it accurately. After all, it is one of the perks of being an author to have a good excuse for frequent days out or holidays abroad.

For years, I enjoyed holidays in Sorrento in southern Italy, vaguely thinking it would make a beautiful setting for a detective novel or film and that no British crime writer had ever used it.

But it was only when I discovered some caves, while walking along the beach of a small fishing village just outside Sorrento, that I got the beginnings of an idea for a plot.

The caves were at sea level and would have been below what was once a Roman villa, providing the owners and their guests with access from the sea thousands of years ago.

The caves looked the perfect place
to hide a kidnap victim

There were some kayaks, paddles and some old fishing nets being stored in the caves now, behind locked metal gates, but it occurred to me that a body could also be hidden there, or a kidnap victim could be kept there. People could bring in contraband items by sea and hide them in there. Or, a character could be imprisoned there by someone who wanted to keep them out of circulation for a while.

When I visited Positano by boat I saw that the coastline of Sorrento had many such recesses at sea level that could be used in this way. They were places that were inaccessible by car and even difficult to get to on foot, but were perfectly accessible by boat if you knew the area well. That’s when the plot of The Shooting in Sorrento occurred to me.

The book, my second Butler and Bartorelli mystery, starts with a bridegroom being shot, seemingly at random by a sniper, while posing for pictures in Piazza Tasso with his bride after his wedding in Sorrento. 

It was a sight I had often seen over the years while on holiday in Sorrento, although, of course, I had never seen anyone actually shot.

Journalist Kate Butler and her partner, retired detective Steve Bartorelli, are staying at the same hotel as the wedding party and Kate feels she has to help the family, who speak no Italian and are traumatised by what has happened.

The years I had spent sightseeing and shopping in the historic centre of Sorrento  helped me enormously in devising my plot as I was able to easily recall how quickly you could get from one location, such as the Franciscan cloisters, to another, Chiesa del Carmine, a baroque church that overlooks the main square, Piazza Tasso.

The cover of my mystery novel,
The Shooting in Sorrento

With my family I had regularly visited the beach of Marina di Puolo, which is out of town on the Sorrentine peninsula, and I had great fun inventing an historic villa with a terrace that overlooked the seafront as the home of one of my characters.

Most people will have a favourite city or holiday resort in their memory bank that they can use as a location in a book and they will find it is a big help to be able to know instinctively whether a character has to turn left, or turn right, to reach a particular place. Also, they will know whether or not it is practical to allow a character to run up a steep hill quickly to reach a place in time for the murder.

If you don’t want to use a real town or village as a setting, you can imagine one of your favourite places that you already know well and move it to another part of the country, or to a different country, and give it another name, but you will still be able to rely on your memories of it to write about it with assurance.

Readers frequently say they will put up with a lot provided a novel has a strong sense of place, so the best settings to choose are the ones you know well and for which you have genuine feelings.

The Shooting in Sorrento is available as a paperback or Kindle ebook on Amazon.

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