#70. A Man Lay Dead

A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh
First in the Inspector Roderick Alleyn series

Pages: 176
Finished: Sept. 9, 2007
Reason for Reading: I'm working my way through this series
First Published: 1934
Genre: mystery, British cozy
Rating: 4/5

First Sentence:

Nigel Bathgate, in the language of his own gossip column, was 'definitely intrigued' about his weekend at Franstock.



Comments: A thoroughly delightful old-fashioned British mystery. A group of people are invited to Franstock for the weekend to participate in a 'Murder' party, except instead of a pretend victim they are confronted with a real corpse. I love these types of mysteries and this one was very clever. I was not able to figure out whodunit and was tickled with the plot twists at the end. The cast of characters are all very stereotypical portraits but that is what makes them so fun. In this first of the series, in which we are introduced to Inspector Alleyn we are not given much information about his character or personal life at all. There was no mention of a wife which I found interesting as all the books I've read are further on in the series and he has a wife in them. I'm really looking forward to seeing his character develop over the course of the books. Recommended!

Comments

  1. This sounds really good! I started a new cozy series last year by Robin Paige (actually it's Susan Albert Wittig's pen name). They are Victorian cozies with Charles Sheridan and Kate Ardleigh. The first was Death at Bishop's Keep and it was REALLY good!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Stephanie, yes, I think you'll like ngaio marsh, she's up there with agatha christie for me. I have Susan Albert Wittig on my tbr list and anxious to try her series but I didn't know about this one. I'll have to make sure to get that one!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular Posts