Ngaio Marsh: A Life

Ngaio Marsh: A Life by Lewis, Margaret. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781890208059.

Ngaio Marsh, a died-in-the-wool New Zealander, wrote more than thirty polished, quintessentially English detective novels between 1934 and 1982, the year of her death. How did she, in some senses an outsider, do it? To say would give away the story of her life, better read in these pages than told. But those who have already met her elegant sleuth Roderick Alleyn know he, too, kept his footing in diverse plots, managing the local idiom whether crime cracking in Britain, on the continent, or in New Zealand. Marshs talent was as varied as her heritage. A gifted artist, a spirited dramatist, actress, and producer, her crime fiction embraces her triple interests. Scotland Yards Alleyn is named for famous Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn.His wife, Agatha Troy, is a talented artist. Nearly all Marshs novels reference one of Shakespeares plays. Many are set in the worlds of art and theater. Most are conceived with the dramatists eye, a keen one, as her high honors for mystery and her work in the theater attest.Biographer Margaret Lewis explores these diverse worlds and the rich harvest of Marshs long life. Lively, acute, sympathetic, she paints a well balanced portrait of a woman leading a single life who was never alone nor lonely, an Edwardian who followed her muses in a thoroughly modern manner, and a writer who, while invincibly Colonial, celebrated Englands Golden Age of mystery as royally as its other Queens of Crime.Our publication is timely given St. Martins Press commitment to republish all of the Ngaio Marsh mystery books in Dead Letter paperbacks.