Artists in Crime - BookWyrm

No cover — Ngaio Marsh: Artists in Crime (1938, Geoffrey Bles)

English language

Published Jan. 2, 1938 by Geoffrey Bles.

(1 review)

Artists in Crime is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the sixth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1938. The plot concerns the murder of an artists' model; Alleyn's love interest Agatha Troy is introduced.

1 edition

urbaer reviewed Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh

Would be better were it not for the Aussie

4 stars

Content warning Spoiler for probably midway through the book or so

An interesting setup with a varied cast of characters. Blame for the murder is cast towards the only member of the artistic group who is no longer in the residence having indicated that they would go on a walking holiday.

Pretty clearly they too were bumped off.

Marsh is touted as NZs Queen of Crime, somewhat akin to Agatha Christie and sure, that makes sense. I'm not sure her detective is quite as interesting as Poirot, but then I'm jumping into a series that was already well established, so it's a little hard to tell.

Certainly the Australian artist in the story provided a lot of cultural cringe for me and it probably would have been a better book without it. It's hard to tell how realistic the character was given it's over 80 years old, but it was very embarrassing. I'm rather sorry if she met someone like that in real life.

Enjoyable, would probably read another in the series at a later date.