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Surfeit of Lampreys (Roderick Alleyn, #10)

Ngaio Marsh

Start date: October 1, 2018

Finish date: October 31, 2018

Discussion: Group Challenges

Why we're reading this: The 10th book for our Ngaio Marsh challenge. Also known as Death of a Peer.
[close] The 10th book for our Ngaio Marsh challenge. Also known as Death of a Peer.

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Group Challenges

* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) by Agatha Christie
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last updated Sep 02, 2025 12:08AM

* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) - SPOILER Thread
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What Members Thought

Oct 05, 2013 Teri-K rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: amusing-to-funny, mystery-golden-age, mystery, historical-mystery, great-to-re-read

Death of a Peer AKA Surfeit of Lamprey, which is a more distinctive title.

The Lamprey's are a carefree family, facing good and bad fortune with impunity and humor. When their rich uncle is murdered in the lift, they face the investigation the same way. There's not a lot of Alleyn in this book, which is too bad, but Roberta Grey and the Lampreys are so fun it's always a pleasure to read anyway. ...more

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Jan 11, 2015 Julie Durnell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: england-uk, mystery

A first-rate mystery! The Lamprey family members are engaging and quirky, the Inspector Alleyn a top notch detective. It was a bit slow going in the beginning but as the murder commenced I was sorely tempted to flip to the ending to find out the culprit, I didn't of course! ...more

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Jun 30, 2023 Tracey rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, new-zealand

I hate the Lampreys. Hate them with a blazing intensity. Either they're monumentally stupid, or merely monumentally clueless - either way, I find them repulsive.

And right now, as she apparently intended them to be charming (told us so often enough) and insouciant and adorable - and sacrificed the not-unpleasant non-entity Roberta to them - I find Ngaio Marsh a bit repulsive too. (Did she actually commit to the fact that Roberta's marrying in? I had to stop listening a couple of minutes before t I hate the Lampreys. Hate them with a blazing intensity. Either they're monumentally stupid, or merely monumentally clueless - either way, I find them repulsive.

And right now, as she apparently intended them to be charming (told us so often enough) and insouciant and adorable - and sacrificed the not-unpleasant non-entity Roberta to them - I find Ngaio Marsh a bit repulsive too. (Did she actually commit to the fact that Roberta's marrying in? I had to stop listening a couple of minutes before the end, with all the self-indulgent bilge about Monte Carlo.)

In much the same way that certain people and books bring out my latent fierce feminist, the horrendous Lamprey family brought out my buried inner revolutionary. These people are inherently worthless. Everything said by their "Uncle G" - who is depicted as being an ugly, stiff, stuffy old killjoy - was utterly true:
"We were extremely grateful -"
"Is it too much to suggest that you might have shown it by pullin' yourselves together? I told you then that you should recognise the fact that you were a man with a small income and a large family and should cut your coat accordingly. It's preposterous, the way you live. Butlers, maids, cars, bringin' gels out, doin' the season, tips here, gamblin' there. Good God, you ought to be livin' like a - like a clerk or something! Why haven't you got some post for yourself where you earned a wage? What are those three boys doin'?"
"They've tried extremely hard to get jobs."
"Nonsense. They could have gone into shops since they're not qualified for any professions. I said when they were at school that they ought to face the facts and work for professions!"
"We couldn't afford the University."
"You could afford half a dozen white elephants. You could afford to traipse around the world in luxury liners, you could afford to take that place in the Highlands, entertain, and God knows what."
"My dear Gabriel! The amount of entertaining we do!"

I don't believe that line was intended to be funny - but the fact that the wastrel speaking it thought that the fact that they didn't entertain as much as actually wealthy people made everything ok. They still took cruises, they still rented homes, they still kept a staff and went on gambling holidays and were shocked, shocked I say! when creditors actually desired to be paid (how middle-class).

And so, of course - spoiler - through no doing of their own they're all cleared, and they come into all the boodle in the end and will live happily ever after - - though I'm sure these idiots will be quite capable of burning through thirty thousand pounds a year and still end up in debt.

Except for that one revolting romance novel I read last year (and Wuthering Heights, where I don't think you're supposed to like anyone), I can't remember ever hating an entire cast of characters as thoroughly as this. I hope all of the Lampreys' properties were all shelled in the Blitz. And I rather hope they were all in them at the time. ...more

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Oct 08, 2018 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, marsh-challenge, mystery, vintage-mystery, police-procedural, mount-tbr-2018

Alleyn grinned, "No," he said. I'm not bored by my job. One gets desperately sick of routine at times but it would be an affectation to pretend one was bored. People interest me and homicide cases are so terrifically concerned with people.

Death of a Peer (originally published as A Surfeit of Lampreys; 1940) by Ngaio Marsh features the very interesting, very charming and very peculiar Lamprey family. Alleyn will certainly get his fill of interesting when he manages to work out who coldbloodedly m Alleyn grinned, "No," he said. I'm not bored by my job. One gets desperately sick of routine at times but it would be an affectation to pretend one was bored. People interest me and homicide cases are so terrifically concerned with people.

Death of a Peer (originally published as A Surfeit of Lampreys; 1940) by Ngaio Marsh features the very interesting, very charming and very peculiar Lamprey family. Alleyn will certainly get his fill of interesting when he manages to work out who coldbloodedly murdered Gabriel Lamprey, Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune with a kitchen skewer while he waited in the elevator outside the family's London top-floor flat.

The Lampreys--at least Lord Charles, his wife, and their brood of children--love to sport the eccentric, grand style of the aristocracy. They simply exude charm and really seem to be quite nice people even if they are a bit clueless about how to hang onto money and often find themselves going through one "financial crisis" or another. They especially seem nice to Roberta Gray who fell quite in love with the family and all its eccentricities when the Lampreys came to New Zealand for a while during one of their crises.

At the story's beginning, Roberta has lost her parents and come to England to live with her aunt. But before she heads to the family bosom, she stops for a bit to visit her favorite family--the Lampreys. She arrives just in time for another financial crisis and to witness the family's massive effort to charm Uncle G (as the Marquis is familiarly known) into floating them another loan. They plan a nice little game of charades as a pleasant entertainment and Michael (the youngest) is prepared to butter up dear old uncle with a present of a rare vase. But the efforts are not a rousing success and Uncle G and Lord Charles have quite an argument about the latter's inability to manage funds.

Uncle G slams out in a huff, hollers for his eccentric wife (who has taken up some kind of mystic, voodoo-like interest) to join him, and plops himself down on the elevator seat to wait. She joins him as does one of the Lamprey twins (yes, there are twins involved). The elevator starts down, there is a lot of screaming, the elevator comes back up, and there is Uncle G, dying from a skewer to the brain. No wonder Violet, his Marchioness, is screaming the house down.

Once the doctor and the police are called, the Lampreys close ranks (because, naturally, none of them could have done it--no matter how annoying it was that Uncle G wasn't going to cover any more crises). Alleyn has to work his way through half-truths, bald-faced lies, and innocent comments with hidden meanings as he interviews the household. He'll also have to sleuth out which twin was in the elevator because everyone claims not to know and the twins each claim to have been the one. In the end, it's Michael (dubbed by the family as the least truthful--in an obvious effort to keep Alleyn from even talking to him) who has the most revealing information to give--if Alleyn can interpret it properly. But...he wouldn't be Alleyn if he didn't.

This is a highly entertaining mystery with an entertaining cast of characters. The Lampreys are so very odd, such evident scroungers, and, as Roberta will attest, quite irresistibly charming. One really doesn't want the murderer to be one of them and hopes that all the evidence pointing against them is just a bunch of red herrings. Marsh manages to weave a very interesting murder plot into a pretty commentary on the aristocracy at the beginning of the second world war. It's quite obvious that the Lampreys of the world are on shaky ground with the changes coming and they're going to have to learn to change if they're going to survive (possible forthcoming inheritance or not....). Another of my Marsh favorites. It appears that most of her novels that I like best have to do with character from Bunchy in Death in a White Tie to the various characters in Death at the Bar to the Lampreys here--I enjoy Marsh's characters and the ways in which she has them interact.

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

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Nov 16, 2016 Melinda rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Gruesome at times but funny too.

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Apr 14, 2011 Tessiebear rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Great read. My version is called "Surfeit of Lampreys" Good to reread occasionally. The BBC have got a good dramatisation of it out. You can buy it in itunes. ...more

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