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One of Ngaio Marsh’s most famous murder mysteries, which introduces Inspector Alleyn to his future wife, the irrepressible Agatha Troy.It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model’s pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been re-enacted in earnest: the model is dead, fixed for ever in one of the most dramatic poses Troy has ever seen.It’s a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn. How can he believe that the woman he loves is a murderess? And yet no one can be above suspicion…

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A touring theatre company in New Zealand forms the basis of one of Marsh’s most ambitious and innovative novelsNew Zealand theatrical manager Alfred Meyer is planning a surprise for his wife's birthday – a jeroboam of champagne descending gently onto the stage after the performance. But, as Roderick Alleyn witnesses, something goes horribly wrong. Is the death the product of Maori superstitions – or something more down to earth?

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Murder and mayhem strike when a small group of people are confined to an island in the middle of a New Zealand lake in one of Ngaio Marsh’s last – and best – novels.The luxury mansion on New Zealand's Lake Waihoe is the ideal place for a world-famous soprano to rest after her triumphant tour. Among the other guests are Chief Superintendent Alleyn and his wife – but theirs is not a social visit. When tragedy strikes, and isolated by one of the lake's sudden storms, Alleyn faces one of his trickiest cases…

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Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand’s North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel.It was a horrible death – Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he’d hated, the New Zealanders he’d despised or the Maoris he’d insulted. Even the spies he’d thwarted – if he wasn’t a spy himself…

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The complete series of Ngaio Marsh reissues concludes with the re-publication of this 20th anniversary edition of this, her final novel.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…

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A quirky Roderick Alleyn mystery about faith, greed – and murder.Times are good in the Cornish village of Portcarrow, as hundreds of unfortunates flock to taste the miraculous waters of Pixie Falls.Then Miss Emily Pride inherits the celebrated land on which Portcarrow stands and wants to put an end to the villagers’ thriving trade in miracle cures, especially Miss Elspeth Costs’s gift shop.But someone puts an end to Miss Cost herself, and Miss Pride’s guardian angel, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, finds himself on the spot in both senses of the word…

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A country house murder, artistic insight and the post-war reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh’s wittiest and most readable novel.Agatha Troy, world famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies.The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in – in the person of Troy’s long-absent husband, Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn…

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Another classic Ngaio Marsh novel reissued.The music rises to a climax: Lord Pastern aims his revolver and fires. The figure in the spotlight falls – and the coup-de-théatre has become murder… Has the eccentric peer let hatred of his future son-in-law go too far? Or will a tangle of jealousies and blackmail reveal to Inspector Alleyn an altogether different murderer?

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Another classic Ngaio Marsh novel reissued.Mary Bellamy, darling of the London stage, holds a 50th birthday party, a gala for everyone who loves her and fears her power. Then someone uses a deadly insect spray on Mary instead of the azaleas. The suspects, all very theatrically, are playing the part of mourners. Superintendent Alleyn has to find out which one played the murderer…

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A classic Ngaio Marsh novelYoung Rickie Alleyn had come to the Channel Islands to try to write, but village life was tedious – until he saw the stablehand in the ditch. Dead, it seemed, from an unlucky jump.It might have ended there had Rickie not noticed some strange and puzzling things. But Rickie’s father, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, had been discreetly summoned to the scene, and when Rickie disappeared, it was the last straw…