Saturday, 14 September 2019

Death At the Bar - Ngaio Marsh

The set up for this murder is gorgeous, and now has me wondering how long and often Marsh stayed in Britain in the 30s (I'm hoping to read her autobiography to finish this project off, which will hopefully have some answers) and whether her memory was just that good or she took notes.

It also reminded me -in a way that the books with Troy don't, oddly - that Marsh was an artist as well as a writer. The cosy pub on the Cornish coast is beautifully painted in words, as is the setting, and of course it's a place people go for the light and also to paint pretty watercolours.

Then there is the gradual mingling of the different groups in the pub, the games of darts and buying of drinks, and finally the dramatic injury of a young man while a trick is being done, and his subsequent death by poison.

The frustrated landlord, driven mad by insinuations by one of his regulars that he is somehow to blame, shoots off to Scotland Yard. Alleyn writes a polite note to the local Super saying 'of course we wouldn't dream of interfering' and they write back and say 'Actually..'

My only quibble is that I wasn't convinced by the love interest aspect of the book at all. It's nicely set up but we never see the engaged couple much more than moderately friendly, so I wasn't really invested in who the girl ended up with. It just seemed tagged on.

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