Artists in Crime

A really good murder mystery Inspector Alleyn meets an artist and falls in love Meanwhile a model is murdered in front of a group of artist but it takes Inspector Alleyn of Scotland Yard to find the killer P S The brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch read it on youtube Yay

Even though I was repulsed by the Sylvester Stallone like figure on the cover, I pulled this out of the book dumpster for a quick read It started out promisingly, with Inspector Roderick Alleyn leaning over the deck rail on a Fiji to England cruise, but once we disembarked in England stasis took over A nude model for an art class held at a wealthy artist and teacher s estate is knifed to death, and everyone in the class becomes a suspect Interminable discussions of the details of the knifing and [...]

I have a love hate relationship with Ngaio Marsh I find her writing is often a mixture of snobbery it s not her characters Marsh herself comes across as believing the aristocracy should have special privileges Mixed up in a murder mystery faugh, how common there is often a touch of cultural cringe believing NZ culture is inferior to other cultures, usually the UK or the States This particular book also tested my desire to read uncensored work Page 17 Miss Katti Bostock, the well known painter of [...]

An author I haven t read before but have always meant to read Would best describe this as a vintage mystery with a hint of romance Felt the mystery component was strongly delivered and I had no inkling who the culprit would be until all was revealed at the end This novel introduces Roderick Alleyn s love interest the fiesty painter Agatha Troy.The dialogue between Alleyn and his mother however did tend to grate on this reader The use of little mum etc just didn t ring true with how Alleyn was po [...]

Well she s done it again Not for the first time, I have read the whole of a Ngaio Marsh book convinced that I ve been very clever and spotted whodunit only to discover I m completely wrong I thought I d picked up subtle clues that others may have missed only to find I d been led up the garden path I love it This book also introduces Agatha Troy I enjoyed seeing the developing relationship between her and Alleyn as their two very different worlds collide.

Originally published on my blog here in March 1998.Like Vintage Murder, this seems to me to be one of the very best of Ngaio Marsh s detective novels By the time this book came out, the characters in her series Alleyn, Fox, Bathgate and so on were well established, old friends In Artists in Crime, another important series character is introduced, the painter Agatha Troy.As so often happens in Ngaio Marsh s stories, one of the series characters interacts with one of the new characters before the [...]

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.Roderick Alley series 3 A Man Lay Dead Roderick Alleyn, 1 3 Artists in Crime Roderick Alleyn, 6 4 Death in a White Tie Roderick Alleyn, 7 3 Death of a Peer Roderick Alleyn, 10 3 Death and the Dancing Footman R [...]

Alleyn is returning from his New Zealand trip when he meets Agatha Troy on board the ship Sparks fly between them and feel each do not like each other Troy hosts a group of artists at her home After a discussion of a method of murder with the group The murder happens in front of all the artists This book has numerous twists and turns keeping the reader alert I read a Large Print edition from my library

A reasonably good tale spoiled by the poor reading of one Terry Wilton His inflexions were odd, his attempt at different accents and mannerisms fell flat Half the time Alleyn was using Fox s voice, or the cardboard ozzie accent assigned to another character The reading felt rushed, as if Wilton couldn t wait to be through I must read this in print and get out of it.I felt that Alleyn did rather lead the suspects in questioning them Instead of saying, What did you do Saturday and seeing if the p [...]

I was quite hopeful about Artists in Crime bringing Alleyn to life for me a bit , since this is where he meets his love interest In a way, the whole set up of this relationship is reminding me a lot of Lord Peter, especially since Alleyn s mother has a title and so on It s not exactly parallel, but close enough to annoy me a little.Still, it does introduce a bit of a human side to Alleyn Bathgate s role is thankfully reduced, though the annoying creature does contrive to be present Inspector Fo [...]

Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn is on his way back to England after a year abroad for his health in Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh, published in 1938 At the port in Suva, Fiji, Alleyn comes across a woman on his ship, painting and cursing Impressed at the way her painting of the port catches the sense of the port rather than just the image of the location, Alleyn becomes intrigued by the artist, who initially mistakes him for a vulgar critic prone to the platitude, I don t pretend to [...]

not a bad plot, but not very nicely written

From my blog arizonatraveler 2I had completely forgotten about Inspector Roderick Rory Alleyn until my friend Lisa reminded me Dame Ngaio Marsh wrote over 30 books with British detective Alleyn as the superstar.I m not one to necessarily read a series in order which surprises me since I like order Years ago I read Death in a White Tie written in the late 1930 s and liked Marsh s style but then forgot about her Last year I enjoyed the book Last Ditch written in the late 70 s which is about a drug [...]

If this were a Friends epsode, it would be The one where Alleyn meets TroyA model is done to death in a manner replicated in a Medieval romance illustrated by one of the artists Throw in unscrupulous young men, nymphomanic young women, a bumptious Australian, the odd pipe of opium and an awkward love affair, and you have the ingredients for a smashing murder mystery This was my very first Alleyn, way back when I was a teenager it is still one of my favourites nearly twenty years later, and deser [...]

Gosh I do love a good Rory Allyn caper This one is a peach It s the one where Rory meets his true love They are just cool as cucumbers despite the murderous shenanigans going on around them And Roddy s mom She is quite a gal Let s not forget that scamp Nigel he always adds pizazz.

Again, five stars for the narrator, Benedict Cumberbatch.I liked this story better than Death in a White Tie.

Dame Ngaio Marsh certainly crafted a rich and appealing mystery circa 1938 within Artists in Crime The story finds the lead detective, Roderick Alleyn, investigating the case of a murdered nude model, Sonia Gluck The list of suspects revolves around eight individuals within an art school, including the owner Agatha Troy, to whom Alleyn has developed a keen relationship with All of them have their respective dislike of Miss Gluck, but the larger question is who perpetuated the method of her murde [...]

Artists in Crime was the 6th series of Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn The crime took place in a class ran by Ms Agatha Troy, a woman who became the love interest of D.I Alleyn It was an art class Sophia Gluck, a model, was asked to pose with a very uncomfortable position After Troy drawed her position with chalk, one of her students thrust a knife in where her heart supposed to be They wanted to paint her as a murder victim They left the class without finishing the painting They came back o [...]

If I ever finish my book, and manage to have an audio edition, I want Benedict Cumberbatch reading it Even with all the other readers I ve come across whose voices I ve fallen for, BC is a little bit spectacular And I m not even a Cumberbitch This is an abridged version of the novel, which normally I feel is an abomination, but for Cumberbatch s narration I m in.This was the book I heard a clip of on Tumblr, the moment when Cumberbatch does the voice of an American woman with a heavy Southern ac [...]

This is one of my favorite Alleyn novels In part that s because it s where he meets Agatha Troy, and then has to investigate a murder at her home, so we get to see the beginnings of their relationship But it s also a really good traditional mystery, with diverse characters for suspects, a limited setting, the chance to work the case through step by step with the investigator, and some gruesome murders that you really want to see solved I like getting to see a bit of Alleyn s family here, as we s [...]

This murder mystery as an audiobook was a very, very pleasant surprise The recording runs to over 3 hours long and I could only hear it over drives, traffic jams, and the gluggy moments before falling asleep, so I did wonder whether it would be possible to keep track of the plot points and the characters over all the breaks in the middle Probably some curious combination of the brain, the actual story itself and the excellent reading over 4 days and a lot of exhaustion, I could nicely follow and [...]

Inspector Alleyn is called in to investigate the murder, and finds among the suspects the artist he fell for on a recent cruise They act tortured and repressed at each other in between scenes of Alleyn co measuring marks on windowsills and the like As always with Marsh, a large portion of this book is given over to seemingly endless natterings between characters about who was psychologically capable of murder Eventually the murder is solved, but I d lost all interest in the case by that point Pu [...]

Returned to England after a year s journey to New Zealand and Quebec whilst he recovered from surgery it must have been a big deal, but it doesn t seem to slow him down any , Alleyn is visiting his mother, Lady Alleyn, at the family manse in Buckinghamshire not twenty miles from London when he is once again called in from vacation to solve a murder It just so happens that the murder occurs at the house of an artist named Agatha Troy whom Alleyn met on shipboard in Suva, Fiji, then shared time wi [...]

I listed to the audiobook version of this story, and it was a fairly good captivating mystery about a group of wanna be authors in a fancy estate that get involved in a whodunnit type of murder A bit like Agatha Christie, but in my opinion not necessarily as good as her stories I was a bit surprised at the end when finding out who the killer was, I didn t see it coming the whole time, but it also wasn t the most amazing reveal either To be honest the reason I listened to the story in the first p [...]

Another very well written murder mystery, beautifully executed I really enjoy Marsh s characters This time we met Alleyn s mother and Troy who quickly established herself as the love interest despite a few other possibilities Apparently being in New Zealand has done wonders for him The fact that the mystery dragged towards the end was the only reason this got a four Marsh makes the procedural approach work brilliantly, and it is really a joy to read, but the repetition did get a bit arduous and [...]

Marsh does a wonderful job, as always, of giving motives to each of her rather quirky suspects, and parceling out the clues but in a way that they are easily missed, allowing her to lead us down the wrong path right until the twist at the end For me though, the highlight here was the interactions between Troy and Alleyn, the tension, the misunderstandings, and Alleyn s trying to keep his feelings seperate from the case Troy is, after all, a suspect The blooming romance is a good edition, it does [...]

Since I ve nearly exhausted Agatha Christie s oeuvre, I decided to try branching out into Ngaio Marsh s This book was compelling and had many of the elements I most love from Christie s mysteries including a quirky cast of characters with complicated relationships and secret pasts, living in the English countryside in the era and social class of manservants and parlor maids Like Christie s plot lines, most of the book is spent detailing the Scotland Yard interviews with duplicitous suspects and [...]

The structure and characters came together very nicely and entertainingly in this 6th Alleyn novel He seems so much human in his internal thoughts than in some of the earlier books Makes me wonder if author Marsh turned some corner in her own mind about her policeman His mother has a place in the book, and she seems delightful in her flexibility with unexpected houseguests, in the description of the various hobbies that are meant to stave off old age, and in her complete and uncritical sense of [...]

A very solid three stars The flow of the narrative is quite stop and go which makes the way the plot moves on a bit chaotic in my book Never the less, the plot is interesting, the reveal not so far from left field, the hints are there I liked the introduction of Roderick s love interest who is so far a strong character in her own right It reminded me of Sayer s introduction of Harriet Vane Which is by far one of my favorite introduction of a partner for a lead character Looking forward to read t [...]

On the plus side, the dialogue was very good, the crime and setting were interesting, and I liked Alleyn and Troy On the minus side, a little too much police procedural endless interviewing of witnesses, endless measuring and note taking Judgment reserved for now will read another Last Ditch, which I already have and see how I feel.