Ngaio Marsh - Black as He's Painted and Last Ditch

There is something strangely dated about Black as He's Painted - not dated to the 70s, when it was written, but dated to an earlier era. We have live-in servants for a start, a husband and wife team who 'oblige' for a few of the neighbours but essentially come with the nice little house Mr Whipplestone has impulsively bought upon retirement. 

Mr Whipplestone is also redolent of an earlier era, as is his nice little house and the Mews it sits in, and his charming cat. 

Other things are very 70s - I don't think anyone now would write the character of the president of the newly independent African state of Ng'ombwana (Marsh sensibly avoided using a real place) quite the way he's written here. It's definitely a bit othering, but at the same time it's quite snobby, in the sense that he went to the same illustrious public school as Roderick Alleyn, and is repeatedly referred to in the narrative by his childhood nickname 'The Boomer'. 

So of course it's poor Alleyn who the FO and Scotland Yard send out to Ng'ombwana to try and persuade the president to be careful of himself on his up and coming visit to Britain. 

Off Alleyn obediently if grumpily goes, horribly self conscious about the whole thing, as well he might be, and secures the promise, although the president is still insistent that despite previous attempts to kill him his people must see that he is not scared. 

Meanwhile in the Mews just a stone's throw away Mr Whipplestone tries to rack his brains about where he's seen some of his neighbours before, realising (after a chat with Alleyn, who he just happens to know) that it was back in Ng'ombwana where he worked under British rule..

Did I guess whodunnit? Yes and no. Mostly no.  What I mostly enjoyed though was the slice of a particular point in time, and poor Alleyn tying himself in knots trying to be both tactful and actually do his job, and the president, ultimately, running rings around him. 

Last Ditch is a completely different affair. A young, pregnant, unmarried woman provides our corpse, taking a dangerous jump over a hedge despite her uncle (who raised her) telling her not to. 

The police work around that is all solid, and young Ricky Alleyn's friendship with the people who hired horses that day also works. They know his parents (Roderick and Troy, of course) and so that puts him on the spot as one of the people to find the body and notice a few things that the police are going to notice too. 

Then somehow, it all falls to bits. Firstly Ricky repeatedly makes a fool of himself, blundering about into trouble like one of those stupid damsels who exist just to make a muck of things and end up tied to a chair in a basement with water running in. 

He also falls in love with a married woman and kisses her (or tries to kiss her) at one point with absolutely zero encouragement that I can see. 

She feels sorry for him, probably because he seems to be emotionally about fourteen but is holidaying by himself and writing a book so presumably is 21 or over. 

His relationship with his dad is quite sweet, but goodness, no wonder they want to keep him away from police work.