Roderick Alleyn is back in this unique crime novel begun by Ngaio Marsh during the Second World War and now completed by Stella Duffy. Mr Glossop is on his regular run delivering wages to the hospitals scattered across New Zealand's Canterbury plains. When his car breaks down, he is forced to stay the night at Mount Gold Hospital, twenty miles from the nearest town, where soldiers recovering from scarlet fever are giving the nursing staff a hard time. When Mr Glossop's payroll disappears from a locked safe and the hospital's death toll starts to rise faster than normal, can the appearance of an English detective working in counterespionage be just a lucky coincidence or an indication that something more sinister is afoot? Renowned with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham as one of the four Golden Age 'Crime Queens', Ngaio Marsh published 32 novels featuring Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn between 1934 and her death in 1982. In 1945 she put aside a new...

A brutal murder with a golf club and an ingenious plot bursting with snobbery, suspicion , adultery and secrets --" to say nothing of the dreadful crime of catricide--¦The lives of the inhabitants of Swevenings are disrupted only by a fierce competition to catch the Old Un, a monster trout known to dwell in a beautiful stream which winds past their homes.Then one of their small community is found brutally murdered; beside him is the freshly killed trout. Both died by violence --" but Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn--™s murder investigation seems to be much more interested in the fish--¦

While Agatha Troy Alleyn is on a river cruise and enjoys true Constable landscapes, her husband Superintendent Alleyn has to investigate a murder most foul amidst the same clutch of Constables...

Sir Henry Ancred, the celebrated Shakespearian actor, wishes to have his portrait painted in the role of Macbeth by Agatha Troy, the famous artist. Amid a welter of practical jokes, Sir Henry dies and Chief Inspector Alleyn is called in to investigate.

“Gas!” Parry Percival said under his breath. Martyn, who thought the Doctor was doing well, glanced indignantly at Parry and was astonished to see that he looked frightened. “ ‘—therefore,’ ” the Doctor was saying arrogantly, “ ‘to beg will not become me—’ ” “Gas!” said an imperative voice off-stage and someone else ran noisily round the back of the set. And then Martyn smelled it. Gas…

Christmas time in an isolated country house and, following a flaming row in the kitchen, there's murder inside. When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected — and foul play it proves to be. Only suspicion falls not on the staff but on the guests, all so unimpeachably respectable that the very thought of murder in connection with any of them seems almost heresy. When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn returns unexpectedly from a trip to Australia, it is to find his beloved wife in the thick of an intriguing mystery…

The restoration of a bombed-out London theatre ends in violent death --" and one of Marsh--™s most vivid and dramatic novelsWhen the bombed-out Dolphin Theatre is given to Peregrine Jay by a mysterious wealthy patron, he is overjoyed. And when the mysterious oil millionaire also gives him a glove that belonged to Shakespeare, Peregrine displays it in the dockside theatre and writes a successful play about it.But then a murder takes place, a boy is attacked, the glove is stolen. Could it be that oil and water don--™t mix? Inspector Roderick Alleyn is determined to find out--¦

Everyone in town disliked the rich, nasty spinster who delighted in stirring up jealousies and exposing well-kept secrets — the doctor’s wild affair, the old squire’s escapades, the young squire’s revels. But when the lady was shot at the piano while playing the overture for an amateur theatrical, Inspector Alleyn knew he was faced with a killer who was very much a professional.

“Murder. What a beastly soft sound the word makes!” With a corpse in a pack of raw wool…

A bit snobbish and a trifle high-strung, Sybil Foster prides herself on owning the finest estate in Upper Quintern and hiring the best gardener. In fact, she is rapturous over the new asparagus beds when a visit from her unwelcome stepson sends her scurrying to a chic spa for a rest cure, a liaison with the spa's director… and an apparent suicide. Her autopsy holds one surprise, a secret drawer a second. And Inspector Roderick Alleyn, C.I.D., digging about Upper Quintern, may unearth still a third… deeply buried motive for murder.

For one unlucky Member of Parliament, a simple visit to the hospital (the "nursing home" of the title) proves fatal. But as Inspector Alleyn will discover, any number of people had reason to help the gentleman to his just reward, including the sour surgeon, his besotted nurse, a resentful wife, and a cabinet full of political rivals.

Ngaio Marsh was one of the queens (she has been called the empress) of England's Golden Age of mystery fiction. And in true Golden Age fashion, her oeuvre opens with, yes, a country-house party between the two world wars – servants bustling, gin flowing, the gentlemen in dinner jackets, the ladies all slink and smolder. Even more delicious: The host, Sir Hubert Handesley, has invented a new and especially exciting version of that beloved parlor entertainment, The Murder Game.

Tension mounts as Inspector Alleyn works against time to collar a vicious killer and avert a political holocaust, the repercussions of which would be felt around the world!

A glove made for Shakespeare's son Hamnet by his grandfather - is it genuine? Is it worth killing for? Is the Dolphin Theatre the place for it?