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Bezig met laden... A Man Lay Dead (origineel 1934; editie 2016)door Ngaio Marsh (Auteur)
Informatie over het werkHet noodlottige spel. door Ngaio Marsh (1934)
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Cozy Golden Age mystery, set in a country house party. The guests and host engage in the parlor game of "Murder." One of them is secretly chosen as the murderer. A pretend crime will be committed and investigated. However, the murder is very real, and Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives to investigate. Nice setting and adequate characterization of the suspects, but in terms of mystery plotting this can't compete with Agatha Christie. We don't follow the investigation that closely, as if that weren't the main interest of the writer, and the plot meanders into the nonsensical with a side-plot about Russian criminal brotherhoods. It also seems a bit strange that a police detective would use some of the suspects as his helpers, no matter how much he has discarded them as potential murderers. The solution to the murder is just really unbelievable. It even gives a specific timeframe that's so ridiculously short plus relies on a bunch of people not noticing a bunch of things. At the end they even admit there's very little to pin it down on the murderer. The secret society subplot is goofy and doesn't make any sense either. Oh and there's a romance subplot too which is totally unconvincing and pointless but then they always are in mystery novels. There were a few sections which I had to read multiple times to understand because they were pointlessly complicated. Overall the writing is serviceable and I read through like yeah sure whatever this is fine so maybe 2 stars but I'm rating 1 cause mystery novels hang together on a convincing conclusion and I didn't see it at all. Nothing else about it is interesting enough for me to care - no funny dialogue, no stand out characters. So yeah. Oh also it uses the n word once. And what universe is it that someone can *remove another person's trousers* in the middle of a normal social get together and everyone just acts totally casual about it? Some of the inconsistencies With the murder, the murderer is specifically allotted *exactly 8 seconds* to get from the bathroom to downstairs, do the murder and turn the lights off. His method relies on the victim being in *exactly* the right place to get stabbed (he could never have turned around, he couldn't have moved away from the stairs). In those 8 seconds, after apparently sliding down a banister, he got the knife in EXACTLY the right spot between bones that was considered so impressive that the murderer needed to know anatomy well. His alibi was 2 people thinking he was in the bath but as well as those 8 seconds he also got out the bath to get a glove from his wife's dressing room. That would take some time. Surely someone would have noticed the splashing had stopped? Bath noises are actually pretty distinctive - you can usually tell when someone's getting out. And there's door noises, footsteps too. In fact, the servant who comes into give Nigel shaving water would surely have seen him on the landing? The timescale is even less than the 8 seconds allotted and it seems extremely unlikely. He'd also have dripped water EVERYWHERE! I can't believe nobody noticed. (Realised iirc he actually wasn't in the bath. He was just pretending to me. Even then splashing about would get you wet and you'd drip. And the noises are noticeably different when you're not in with your whole body. Ah well) The attempts in the scene before the murder to make it work just... don't. He also decided to do this plan even though he only had a single glove - he tried to avoid leaving prints but completely failed. Surely his wife would have thought "oh I'm sure I put those gloves in the drawer" too and realised something was up - but she doesn't; Alleyn actually misleads here by claiming he found one in the hall so the wife doesn't question it. When Alleyn does a totally pointless "reconstruction" (he asks Nigel to play the murderer and then goes off at him when he shows a slight hesitancy... before asking the person he knows to be the murderer to do it... and him doing it was essential to his terrible plan... so why attack Nigel??) the murderer is in no way revealed except for Alleyn accusing him and him saying "damn you". Which he didn't need to do and would hardly hold up in court. Also the motive of "oh he was mad at the victim for flirting with his wife" seems kind of weird given he never even attempted to stop it in any way at all and apparently let it go on for years and years. The victim seems like an utter prick by the way. Can't pretend I felt any sympathy towards him. There's probably more but just. blurgh. Bad. Maybe also I'm stupid! I don't know At Sir Hubert Handesley's country house party, five guests have gathered for the uproarious parlor game of "Murder." Yet no one is laughing when the lights come up on an actual corpse, the good-looking and mysterious Charles Rankin. Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives to find a complete collection of alibis, a missing butler, and an intricate puzzle of betrayal and sedition in the search for the key player in this deadly game Cant believe I've read so many Alleyn books, but have taken this long to get to read #1. This book starts with Nigel Bathgate, junior reporter and ongoing stalwart of the series, being invited to a country house weekend with his cousin. There he meets Angela, and a number of other characters, and during a game of "murders" finds his cousin murdered with a knife in his back. Alleyn arrives to investigate, still young and an Inspector (somehow morphing into the better known CHIEF inspector near the end of the book. The other usual cast - such as Fox - dont make it into this first novel. There is a little diversion (Maguffin) over the Russian community in London, which allows for the dagger to be used in the murder. Alleyn is a little moodier than in later novels, still being young and possibly not fleshed out as in later novels. Not sure I would have continued with the series had I come across this book first. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de reeks(en)Roderick Alleyn (1) Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)Fontana (389) Mirabilia (81) Mirabilia (81) Prisma detectives (73) Is opgenomen inHeeft de bewerking
Crime comes to a country house: "Any Ngaio Marsh story is certain to be Grade A, and this one is no exception." --The New York Times This classic from the Golden Age of British mystery opens during a country-house party between the two world wars--servants bustling, gin flowing, the gentlemen in dinner jackets, the ladies all slink and smolder. Even more delicious: The host, Sir Hubert Handesley, has invented a new and especially exciting version of that beloved parlor entertainment, The Murder Game . . . "It's time to start comparing Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around." --New York Magazine "A peerless practitioner of the slightly surreal, English-village comedy-mystery." --Kirkus Reviews Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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an example of the fun flippant attitude in much of the writing: "She was extremely white and had about her the pathetic dignity of the very young when they meet disaster with fortitude." ( )