From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

Died in the Wool (Roderick Alleyn, #13)

Ngaio Marsh

Start date: January 1, 2019

Finish date: January 31, 2019

Discussion: Group Challenges

Why we're reading this: We're carrying on with Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn series for our 2019 group challenge.…more
[close] We're carrying on with Ngaio Marsh's Inspector Alleyn series for our 2019 group challenge.

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Group Challenges

* Sept 25: The Mystery of the Blue Train (1928) by Agatha Christie
By Susan · 17 posts · 20 views

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

Jan 09, 2019 Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-murder-crime-20th-century, aotearoa-authors

A little disappointing

This was a reread for me, but from a long time ago.

The main thing that surprised me was how little this murder mystery evoked New Zealand for me, in spite of the setting on a South Island sheep farm. This was because the majority of the main characters were either British or had strong British links, so this felt like any other early Marsh with people fond of melodramatic utterances. The exceptions were the murder victim herself, who really seemed so much like a female NZ M ...more

31 likes · Like · see review

May 16, 2021 John rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ngaio-marsh

This Alleyn mystery is set in a New Zealand isolated sheep farm where Mrs Rubrick a woman not well liked and a busy body is murdered. She is put in a wool bale and found a few weeks later.

Lots of suspects her nephew Grace who inherits her money, her husband, Ursula her ward or Cliff a boy she lavished with education and ideas above his class and to the chagrin of his communist father. There is also Terrence the secretary who may have a motive. Of is it Markin the valet who worked for a Japanese ...more

14 likes · Like · see review

Sep 11, 2017 John Frankham rated it liked it

Shelves: crime-detective

Not one of my favourite Inspector Alleyn whodunnits. A nice New Zealand high country setting, and an inventive murder, but Alleyn, arriving long after the event, and concerned with war-time treason as well as murder, has to recover past events by a round-table recounting of the past by the inhabitants of the farm estate. Rather static. No Troy, no Inspector Fox.

GR blurb:

One summer evening in 1942, Flossie Rubrick, goes to her husband's wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears. T ...more

3 likes · Like · see review