Ngaio Marsh: Hand in Glove and Dead Water

Hand in Glove

Terrible but strangely likable snob Mr Pike Period (perhaps because his snobbery makes him vulnerable and slightly ridiculous) is in the habit of writing short but elaborate letters of condolence.

He has also recently started sharing a house with Harold Cartell, an old friend who has retired from the law. Cartell is also a snob in his way, declining to acknowledge his adoptive niece and refusing to release a little of the money his 24 year old stepson is coming into in six months anyway, purely because he doesn't want him to leave the guards and take up with arty types and 'beatniks'. (The book was published in 1962)

Unlike the last book I felt Marsh managed to have different kinds of people - servants, spivs and snobs - without making them too hopelessly ridiculous or stereotypical. There's an element of farce around Cartell's dog, who all the local male dogs fight over quite literally, and a more sinister element regarding the adoptive niece's boyfriend who may or may not be terrifying her into silence post murder, and then Mr Pyke Period wandering through this world being hopelessly unworldly and putting himself in danger, and somehow she weaves it together well.

I whizzed through this one and moved on to:

Dead Water

A young boy is cured of his warts the day after a beautiful lady at a local spring tells him to bathe his hands and believe.

Two years later the spring is a tourist trap, and the new owner of the island it's on (who just happens to be Roderick Alleyn's old French mistress) wants what she sees as a dangerous scam shut down, refusing even to profit by selling the island on.

With this threat to their newfound prosperity hanging over the locals and at least one person devastated by the challenge to what has become an article of faith for her, the attacks begin.

I loved the setting, and Alleyn's old French mistress. And both points of view were nicely balanced - the cruelty of offering false hope to disabled pilgrims, including a young mother with a baby that won't thrive, and then the human cost of all the investment going south and the fact that sometimes, presumably through a kind of faith healing, it does work.

My only complaint is that the first half is so good that I found the murder and subsequent investigation an unwelcome distraction. The moral issues and conflicts between people that Marsh sets up are often so interesting. I would have enjoyed having her tackle these conflicts for a bit longer, and perhaps seeing a resolution. Instead of the crime being solved but the reader left wondering 'But what happened next?'