I am an Agatha Christie fanatic and have pretty much read all her books. In my search to read more books like Christie’s, I’ve come across Ngaio Marsh, a writer from New Zealand. Unfortunately, she is missing that special something that Christie has. Marsh’s books Enter a Murderer and The Nursing Home Murder are straight marches from murder to revelation. The former is set in a theater house, while the latter is in the mentioned nursing home. Each book is filled with so many characters […]

Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand mystery writer who is often compared to Agatha Christie. Her signature detective, Roderick Alleyn, is not as much a caricature as Hercule Poirot (whom I love, but is decidedly a comical figure). Alleyn is steady, mild-mannered, and modest. He is the best part of Marsh’s Collected Short Mysteries, a short book featuring a few mysteries, a teleplay and some oddities. I enjoyed this collection, but there isn’t an awful lot to say about it. There are some standard short […]