A Man Lay Dead

I finally finished my Jólabókaflóð gift from last year! I'm not sure what took me so long - I guess there is a double challenge at the start of the story. First, we're introduced to a whole cast of characters (of course - you need a pool of suspects!) and it's tricky keeping them straight at the beginning. Second, this is chock full of contemporary slang and cultural references, so it can be downright baffling at times.

Still, this is a great classic murder mystery that almost out-Christies Christie. A bunch of people congregate in an English country manor to play “The Murder Game,” and of course someone actually gets murdered. It follows all the beats, but does a pretty good job of it. It definitely had me paranoid about who done it! And there are some fun side-notes like the gardener's daughter, and Inspector Alleyn himself is intriguing - sometimes comic, sometimes tragic, and sometime and verging on sociopathic in his dedication to solving the crime. If I read more Ngaio March, it will be to find out more about him.

1930's, England,Murder Game at a mansion! Did not enjoy, just too many suspects and characters. English written dialect also was a bit hard to follow! David N.

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.