“The body” was discovered by Inspector Roderick Alleyn himself, old friend of the deceased, eighty-three-year-old Miss Emily Pride. Miss Pride had been looking for trouble: the sole inheritor of a tiny island, site of a miraculous spring, she didn’t approve of the sudden flood of visitors in search of miracles. So she threatened to close the spring. And that brought her what she’d been looking for…

Hyacinths… mad singing… Scattered pearls… and a strangled beauty every ten days… Inspector Alleyn believed the killer was on a sleek cruiser bound for South Africa. It was now the tenth day out, and everyone, including the famed Alleyn, felt the horror closing in…

A classic Ngaio Marsh novel which features blood-curdling murders in the confines of a riverboat, the Zodiac, cruising through Constable country. 'He looks upon the murders that he did in fact perform as tiresome and regrettable necessities,' reflected Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn on the international crook known as 'the Jampot'. But it was Alleyn's wife Troy who knew 'the Jampot' best: she had shared close quarters with him on the tiny pleasure steamer Zodiac on a cruise along the peaceful rivers of 'Constable country'. And it was she who knew something was badly wrong even before Alleyn was called in to solve the two murders on board...

Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of Macbeth, the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck. But one night the claymore swings and the dummy's head is more than real: murder behind the scene. Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience…

Inspector Alleyn had so many suspects for the murder of the Home Secretary, that, for once, he was at a loss. Except for one detail — one grisly little detail — that only the likes of Roderick Alleyn would ever notice…

Another classic Ngaio Marsh novel. At first it looked as if Sybil Foster had intentionally left the world: with two husbands dead, a daughter marrying the wrong man and – it later appeared – a debilitating disease, it was no wonder she took her own life. But no one believed she was the type – especially Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn. For the field was ripe with unfortunate engagements – one of them a very grave mistake…

When the Sword Dancer's mock beheading becomes horribly real, it is Superintendent Roderick Alleyn who must discover who had the best motive for murder.

Ngaio Marsh's most popular novel begins when a young New Zealander's first contact with the English gentry is the body of Lord Wutherford — with a meat skewer through the eye. The Lampreys had plenty of charm — but no cash. They all knew they were peculiar, the charades with which they entertained their guests became quite complicated. And when Uncle Gabriel Lamprey dies, Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn is called in.

Suspicion runs rampant among the gentry of an English village, as Inspector Alleyn tries to find a method in murder — before a crafty killer can strike again!

It's murder in the little English village, but the two local spinsters – Miss Campanula, who was shot by a gun hidden in a grand piano, and Miss Prentice, her friend who may have been the intended victim – are not exactly the beloved little old ladies of song and story. They were (and are) waspish, gossiping snobs, passionate only about their own narrowly defined religion and, perhaps, about the local vicar. Could they have been sufficiently unpleasant to provoke a murderer? Inspector Roderick Alleyn finds it difficult to imagine this, until he's faced with the notion that the murderer was in fact provoked by Rachmaninoff's Prelude in c-sharp minor.

World War II continues to rage on, and Inspector Alleyn continues to act as the Special Branch's eyes and ears in New Zealand. While his primary brief is spy-catching, he is happy to lend a hand in matters of old-fashioned policing, and that's exactly what the Flossie Rubrick case initially appears to be. A highly opinionated and influential Member of Parliament, Ms. Rubrick was also the wife of a sheep farmer, and she was last seen heading off to one of his storage sheds. Three weeks later, she has turned up—very dead, and packed in a bale of her own wool. Had she made political enemies? Had a mysterious legacy prompted her death? Or—as Alleyn increasingly thinks likely—could the shadowy world of international espionage have intruded, improbably, on this sheep farm in the back of beyond?

The guests ranged themselves at both sides of the door, like the chorus in a grand opera, A figure appeared in the entrance. It was not Mary Bellamy, but Florence. As if to keep the scene relentlessly theatrical, she began to cry out in a small, shrill voice: “A doctor! A doctor! Is there a doctor in the house!”

When Lord Pasern Bagott takes up with the hot music of Breezy Bellair and his Boys, his disapproving wife Cecile has more than usual to be unhappy about. The band's devastatingly handsome but roguish accordionist, Carlos Rivera, has taken a rather intense and mutual interest in her precious daughter Félicité. So when a bit of stage business goes awry and actually kills him, it's lucky that Inspector Rodrerick Alleyn is in the audience. Now Alleyn must follow a confusing score that features a chorus of family and friends desperate to hide the truth and perhaps shelter a murder in their midst.

New Zealand, Maoris, murder… Who is better qualified to write about them than Ngaio Marsh?

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…