Colour scheme

296 pages

English language

Published Feb. 27, 2012 by Felony & Mayhem Press.

ISBN:
978-1-937384-55-5
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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!

24 editions

Review of 'Colour Scheme' on 'Goodreads'

This book is full of disagreeable people and hardly features Mr. Alleyn at all. It's extremely dated and hardly worthy of Ms. Marsh. It's got a dreadful attitude to the native New Zealand population, a hearty disrespect for the transplanted Britishers who one supposes are the protagonists, and the murder victim is a disgusting lecherous creep. Even the romance doesn't quite come off. The only saving grace is that I borrowed the audiobook from the library and so don't have to own it.

I continued to listen to the end because I am reading all of the Alleyn books in order, but I have to say you could totally skip this one. It doesn't further Roderick or Troy's story at all, except to tell one that Roderick is in NZ as part of his foreign office war work.

Subjects

  • Roderick Alleyn (Fictitious character)
  • Police
  • Fiction

Places

  • New Zealand