Ngaio Marsh - Grave Mistake and Photo Finish

Grave Mistake

I hesitated over including Grave Mistake in my Marsh reread. Partly because I've read it within the last couple of years – in fact its one of those which started me off on the reread in the first place - and partly because I found it (as I think I've described it before) a nice workmanlike job that didn't really stand out in any way.

It still doesn’t. There are some interesting characters – the ‘daily’ Mrs Jobbins, the wealthy Mr Markos and his son – and a scattering of curious motives that never feel fully explored. 

Something else that’s been creeping up but I’ve only just noticed is that the books seem rather more police procedural by this stage. Alleyn starts his career in the 30s as a gentleman ‘tec. A police officer yes, but one with much in common with other ‘great detectives’. 

That has gradually faded out by this point. Although people still react with surprise to his social class, Alleyn is a well respected chief superintendent very much embedded in the force and the way they do things. There are no brilliant flashes of insight. Just solid, plodding, work. Whether that is a reflection of the kind of books Marsh wanted to write, or the kind of books people wanted to read by the late 70s when Grave Mistake was published, I’m not sure.

 

Photo-Finish

In photo-finish we’re just on the cusp of the 80s. Brilliant opera star Isabella Sommita is being persecuted by a paparazzo who is following her around the world taking – in fact orchestrating – the most unflattering pictures they can, and then selling them for a small fortune.

At the same time La Sommita has taken on (both musically and as a lover) a young and handsome musician who has written an opera she thinks is wonderful, but anyone with any musical sense (including, with a sudden thud down to earth, the young man himself) knows is a dud.

Troy and Alleyn fetch up at the scene in the semi plausible fashion they sometimes do – Scotland Yard is curious about La Sommita’s activities, Troy has a commission to paint her.

Incidentally there is a repetition in this book of someone suggesting to Alleyn (as more than one person did in Black as He’s Painted’) that he should ‘put his foot down’ about Troy’s work if he’s not comfortable with the situation. He has to explain why he doesn’t in a way he never had to in earlier works. Crime fiction (or at least the stuff still available) was seemingly more sexist in the 70s than it was in the 40s. It’s perhaps a reflection of the kind of crime being written – supposedly more realistic and hardboiled – but still very strange to stumble across in the same author. 

There is also a moment when Alleyn mentions male chauvinism but confesses he’s never sure what women mean by that, apparently unconscious that his boss telling him to lay down the law to his wife would be an prime example.

Again I kind of did and didn't enjoy this. It was ok. It didn't sparkle like her earlier work, and maybe wasn't meant to.