A Man Lay Dead (A Roderick Alleyn Mystery)

mirihawk reviewed A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh

Review of 'A Man Lay Dead' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

The classic! Just as good as remembered. Written in the 1930s. House party, murder game, real murder.... might seem trite if you don't realize what a new idea it was when she wrote it. Her descriptions and character building are also tremendous as well. This is the first of the Alleyn of Scotland Yard books - she went on to write about 30 of them.

John Kelly reviewed A Man Lay Dead (A Roderick Alleyn Mystery) by Ngaio Marsh (Roderick Alleyn (1))

Review of 'A Man Lay Dead (A Roderick Alleyn Mystery)' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

The author has a beautiful way with words and at some points, the language was so wonderfully modern, all wry and sardonic and self-aware. But the plotting was awful, with a dozen or so characters not so much introduced but rather vomited onto the page over a couple of paragraphs so I spent half the book going “now which one is this?” For example, there are two characters, a Mr and a Mrs Wilde, and yet while the two are in conversation, the author would refer to one of them as “Wilde”, as in “”Wilde said...”.

This was my first Inspector Alleyn book, but based on this outing, I don’t know if I’ll make the effort with the rest.

mirihawk reviewed A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh

Review of 'A Man Lay Dead' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

The classic! Just as good as remembered. Written in the 1930s. House party, murder game, real murder.... might seem trite if you don't realize what a new idea it was when she wrote it. Her descriptions and character building are also tremendous as well. This is the first of the Alleyn of Scotland Yard books - she went on to write about 30 of them.

Eat_Read_Knit

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April 14, 2015

kakapo

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Jan. 29, 2020

Krysta

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Dec. 7, 2015

A Man Lay Dead (A Roderick Alleyn Mystery)

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