Artists In Crime - Ngaio Marsh

I'm familiar with Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn series through the set of DVDs my dad owns. British detective shows, at least the ones he owns - are a hit or miss prospect. I loved Foyle's War, but Campion felt as though it tried too hard to be cute or charming, and came off as annoying. Inspector Alleyn was in the middle, but more towards the Foyle end of things. I think I prefer for the detective to be fairly straight-laced and serious, and then it can be the suspects and supporting cast that are the oddballs bouncing off him.

I don't know if Marsh wrote the books in chronological order, but Artists in Crime takes place before any of the series that were on the DVDs. At this point, Alleyn's just returning from some work in New Zealand, and meets a painter he knows of by the name of Agatha Troy on the boat. They don't exactly hit it off well - Troy dislikes intrusions on her work, and Alleyn's a little too stiff and proper to roll with the initial brush off - but privately, they both like each other more than the other is aware.

Their next opportunity to meet comes all too soon, as Sonia Gluck, serving as a model at Troy's studio, winds up dead from a knife jammed into the piece of furniture she was meant to posing on. As Sonia was rather difficult to work with, there are no shortage of suspects, from a moody, odd, current lover known as Garcia, to a brief former lover (the son of a lord), to said son-of-a-lord's fiancee, to a plagiarist she'd found out, and any number of people she'd irritated with her attitude. That Alleyn has to consider Troy a suspect doesn't make things any easier for him, not that Troy is all that thrilled with it either.

One thing I've mentioned before with certain detective stories is that the explanations the detectives come up with are so fantastic, I feel the killer could get away with it if they merely bluffed their way through. Poirot was guilty of this more than once. Marsh put my fears at ease by having a) having the killer try to bluff their way through, only for the attempt to be blown by someone else, and b) having Alleyn admit later it would have been tough to prove otherwise. That was appreciated. Beyond that, Marsh laid things out pretty well. I had a pretty good idea who did, but that was more because their alibi seemed the least verifiable, and because everything was pointing at someone else. Which is a meta way of solving it, following the genre rules rather than the story clues.

Acknowledging that it's been two years since I watched those shows, Alleyn is a bit different here than I remember. More cheeky I think. I don't know if that's down to the actor, to the directing, or if Marsh shifted Alleyn's characterization in later stories. it's not a problem, Alleyn's reactions are always understandable, and in many cases, are much the same one I would have had. Marsh manages a large cast well, giving all the suspects, Alleyn's partners, and several of the minor characters enough fleshing out to make them feel real. Even Troy's help staff, who only appear for a page or two, get enough spotlight to give some idea of the kind of people they are, and in a way that makes them seem interesting. It was pretty impressive.