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Overture to Death (Roderick Alleyn, #8)

Ngaio Marsh

Start date: August 1, 2018

Finish date: August 31, 2018

Discussion: Group Challenges

Why we're reading this: The 8th book in our Ngaio Marsh challenge
[close] The 8th book in our Ngaio Marsh challenge

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Group Challenges

* 2026 Challenge
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What Members Thought

Jul 21, 2018 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

When a group of worth locals decide to put on some amateur theatricals, in order to raise money for a new piano, it inflames local passions, jealousies and insecurities. Our cast include the local Squire, Jocelyn Journingham, his cousin, Eleanor, his son, Henry, who is in love with the Rector’s daughter, Dinah, her father, Rector Copeland – a man adored by the two local, gossipy spinsters, Cousin Eleanor and Idris Campanula, the local doctor, Dr Template, whose wife is an invalid and the attract ...more

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Jan 29, 2022 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, vintage-mystery, virtual-mount-tbr-2022, mystery

When reading the synopsis for Overture to Death (1939) by Ngaio Marsh, one can be excused for thinking that this will be another of her theatrical mysteries. After all, it tells us that a group of seven amateur actors are preparing to put on the play Shop Windows when Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C Sharp Minor" is set for the overture. Then on opening night the pianist barely gets started--playing three chords and then stepping on soft pedal--before a loud bang is heard and Miss Idris Campanula fa When reading the synopsis for Overture to Death (1939) by Ngaio Marsh, one can be excused for thinking that this will be another of her theatrical mysteries. After all, it tells us that a group of seven amateur actors are preparing to put on the play Shop Windows when Rachmaninoff's "Prelude in C Sharp Minor" is set for the overture. Then on opening night the pianist barely gets started--playing three chords and then stepping on soft pedal--before a loud bang is heard and Miss Idris Campanula falls dead against the sheet music. There's no performance and the play setting itself features very little in the plot other than to provide a way for Marsh to insert a rather ingenious method of murder. I'm quite sure I'd never come across a deadly piano before I read this one the first time (long ago and far way from my hometown Carnegie Library).

The stars of Marsh's show are Miss Campanula and her bosom friend Miss Eleanor Prentice, two embittered old maids who like nothing more than to spread dreadful rumors about their neighbors and then confess their sins to the handsome rector. Of course, the dear friends are also rivals for the rector's regard--each woman imagining herself to be the front-runner in the "rector's wife" stakes. When Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives on the scene to decide who gave Miss Campanula such a dramatic death scene, he finds that he must first discover if the murderer has cast the right woman as victim. For until about twenty minutes or so before curtain time, everyone assumed that Miss Prentice would be playing her standard piece as the opening. She is prevented from doing so by an infected finger and only agrees to give up her martyr's determination to play no matter how much it hurt after the rector convinces her. There seems to have been no time for the gun to have been rigged up in the piano after the change in pianists took place--so was Miss Prentice the intended victim? And what was the motive? Do people really kill just because someone is a meddling, gossipy busybody?

This was an enjoyable entry in the Alleyn case files. A cast of interesting characters from repressed village spinsters and the handsome cleric to the county squire and the young lovers (whose parents are forbidding the match) to the doctor and his adulterous love interest, the attractive widow; a clever murder method; a heaping helping of red herrings (some provided courtesy of the young scamp George Biggins; and plenty of humor and excellent dialogue.

Great fun even though I remembered who the culprit is--of course I did read this about four years ago. This time I listened to an audio version read by Wanda McCaddon. She does a very nice job giving voice and unique personality to each of the characters and increased the rating for this reading from 3.5 stars (previous) to a full ★★★★.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting portions of review. Thanks. ...more

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Jun 26, 2018 ShanDizzy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Wow! How poisonous, spiteful, jealous and unpleasant can these two repressed biddies be!!!! They were so awful that I found myself thinking "surely one or both of them will be murdered by someone whose life they have poisoned by their sly innuendos and backhanded comments, and I don't care." I don't understand why they were allowed to continue their horrible behavior unchecked! I'm sure that I would have called them on it! Still, there were a few reasons why I liked this story but the main one i ...more

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Oct 12, 2021 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, mystery, vintage-mystery, bought-2018

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Nov 13, 2016 Melinda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I knew who the murderer was by page 30 but enjoyed the mystery all the same. This was the first of this series that I remember where a character took God's name in vain. That was disappointing. ...more

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Jun 05, 2014 Lemar rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery, novel

Ngaio Marsh is great company. This mystery was full of humor, clever deductions and above all a sympathetic yet incisive eye illuminating human foibles and triumphs.

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