Inspector Alleyn 3-Book Collection 3

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the third volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.

DEATH IN A WHITE TIE
The season has begun. Débutantes and chaperones are planning their gala dinners – and the blackmailer is planning strategies to stalk his next victim. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn knows that something is up and has already planted his friend Lord Gospell at the dinner. But someone else has got there first…

OVERTURE TO DEATH
It was planned as an act of charity: a new piano for the parish hall, and an amusing evening's entertainment to finance the gift. But all is doomed when Miss Campanula sits down to play. A chord is struck, a shot rings out, and Miss Campanula is dead.
it seems to be a case of sinister infatuation for Roderick Alleyn…

DEATH AT THE BAR
A midsummer evening – darts night at The Plume of Feathers, a traditional Devonshire public house. A distinguished painter, a celebrated actor, a woman graduate, a plump lady from County Clare and a local farmer all play their parts in a fatal experiment which calls for the investigative expertise of Inspector Alleyn…

Reviews

‘The brilliant Ngaio Marsh ranks with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers’
Times Literary Supplement

‘Ngaio Marsh’s Death in a White Tie is the best detective story I have ever read…’
Dashiell Hammett

‘[This book has] a distinction that puts the author in the front rank of crime story writers’
Times Literary Supplement

‘A brilliant, vivacious teller of detective novels.’
News Chronicle

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 she received what she called her ‘damery’ in 1966.