Death on the Air

The only collection of Ngaio Marsh short stories, first published in 1995 to celebrate her centenary, now with two additional stories.

A man dies with his hand on a radio dial. A disguised aristocrat finds murder at the opening night of a play. A cryptogram produces death in an English churchyard. These are the short cases of Scotland Yard’s Inspector Roderick Alleyn who, with his lovely wife Agatha Troy, charmed his way through more than thirty novels. The book concludes with a script written for the television series Crown Court, in which the lead was played by Joan Hickson who later became famous as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple.

Death on the Air and Other Stories serves both as the perfect introduction to Ngaio Marsh and as a nostalgic journey for the aficionado, each story echoing the themes explored in her detective novels.

Reviews

‘Ngaio Marsh worked largely within the conventions of the golden age detective story but transcended the genre by the power of her writing, the excellent use she makes of her own experience and interests, and the rich variety of characters who people her novels. The best of her books will endure.’
P.D.James

‘An elegant, disciplined writer, Marsh deserves to be read and re-read not just for her plots but for her characterisation, for her painter’s eye view and for her outsider’s insights into the heart of a vanished social world.’
Susan Howatch

‘I rate Ngaio Marsh among the best in this genre, having read and re-read them many times over the years.’
Joan Hickson

About the author

Dame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895 and died in February 1982. She wrote over 30 detective novels and many of her stories have theatrical settings, for Ngaio Marsh’s real passion was the theatre. She was both actress and producer and almost single-handedly revived the New Zealand public’s interest in the theatre. It was for this work that the received what she called her ‘damery’ in 1966.