Roderick Alleyn mysteries

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...

For Member of Parliament Sir Derek O'Callaghan, a simple visit to the hospital proves fatal. But as Inspector Alleyn will discover, any number of people had reason to help the gentleman to his just reward, including a sour surgeon, a besotted nurse, a resentful wife, and a cabinet full of political rivals, in this classic of detection by the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.

A police inspector finds trouble during a trip to New Zealand: "It's time to start comparing Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around." -New York Magazine Inspector Roderick Alleyn has taken a break from England and journeyed to New Zealand, and traveling along with him are the members of the Carolyn Dacres English Comedy Company. The actors' operatic intrigues offer an amusing diversion-until, unexpectedly, they turn deadly. And Alleyn...

It's debutante season in London, and that means giggles and tea-dances, white dresses and inappropriate romances...and much too much champagne. And, apparently, a blackmailer, which is where Inspector Roderick Alleyn comes in. The social whirl is decidedly not Alleyn's environment, so he brings in an assistant in the form of Lord "Bunchy" Gospell, everybody's favorite uncle. Bunchy is more than lovable; he's also got some serious sleuthing skills....

A game of darts does involve some danger, but it's rarely lethal. There are exceptions, however, like the famous barrister who was enjoying a pint at the Plume of Feathers pub, and is now residing at the morgue. But Inspector Roderick Alleyn has a growing hunch that this peculiar "accident" can be traced to an old legal case ...

The unspeakably wealthy (and generally unspeakable) Jonathan Royal has decided to throw a party and, just for fun, has studded the guest list with people who loathe one another. When a blizzard imprisons them all in Royal's country house, murder ensues, and there are nearly as many suspects as there are potential victims. Eventually, Inspector Alleyn makes his way through the snow to put things right, in this classic whodunit by the Mystery Writers...

Flossie Rubrick, a highly opinionated and influential member of the New Zealand Parliament, was last seen heading off to one of the storage sheds on her sheep farm. Three weeks later, she turned up dead and packed in a bale of her own wool. What happened on the night of her long-ago disappearance? In the country on counterespionage duty, Inspector Roderick Alleyn is happy to lend a hand.

Inspector Roderick Alleyn has decamped for the South of France on a family vacation-though for him, the vacation will involve some official poking around. Unfortunately, the object of his poking-the cultish denizens of a sinister and luxurious chateau-are not fond of being poked, and they have a particularly unpleasant way of getting their point across ...

The village of South Mardian likes the old ways. The very old ways. This may be 1957, but South Mardian still features a blacksmith, a village idiot, and an elaborate fertility ritual performed at the winter solstice. There's squabbling, of course, and worse-like when one of the ritual's main players is found beheaded, everything north of his neck having been neatly lopped off by a ritual sword. Inspector Alleyn does have to contain a certain incredulous...

Mary Bellamy is the sweetheart of the London stage-everyone simply adores darling Mary. So her fans and friends are heartbroken when somehow Mary manages to spritz herself not with her favorite perfume but with a deadly insecticide meant to be sprayed on the azaleas. What Inspector Alleyn smells is something fishy, especially since everything he learns about lovely, fragile Mary suggests that in fact she was a rather vicious battleax. ), And with...

Inspector Alleyn's wife, the artist Agatha Troy, has a special fondness for Constables-the paintings, that is, not the policemen. So she jumps at the chance to take a river cruise through "Constable Country" in the east of England, in honor of the nineteenth-century master of landscapes. Her enthusiasm dims a little, though, when it becomes clear that the ticket became available at the last minute only because a previous passenger was murdered in...

The acclaimed author brings us crime at a country-house Christmas party in "one of her best and most baffling mysteries" (Daily Express). It's the Christmas season in 1972, and Agatha Troy is at a house party, enjoying the local holiday pageant and also painting the host's portrait. The painting's coming along fine, but the pageant goes a little pear-shaped when one of the players disappears. Could one of the eccentric guests have been involved?...

Chief Superintendant Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard and his writer son combine their talents to solve a murder.

The soprano Isabella Sommita was widely loathed, so much so that the problem with solving her murder is less a lack of plausible suspects than an embarrassment of options. On a lavish island estate, cut off from the mainland by a sudden storm, Roderick Alleyn is among the guests, and fortunately can take charge in the coppers' absence, in this delightful detective novel by the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.

This novel of murder and espionage in World War II New Zealand is "an exquisite reminder of the brilliance of Marsh's London detective" (The Guardian). Inspector Roderick Alleyn just wants to write a letter to his wife, but World War II, for one, keeps intruding. It's war-work, after all, that has brought Alleyn to this seedy hospital in New Zealand's hinterlands, and it's the war that has left the hospital swimming in convalescing soldiers-noisy,...