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Clutch of Constables (Roderick Alleyn, #25)

Ngaio Marsh

Start date: January 17, 2020

Finish date: February 10, 2020

Discussion: Archive: Ngaio Marsh Buddy Reads

Why we're reading this: After 2 years of Ngaio Marsh challenges, some of us want to read the rest of the series as buddy reads.
[close] After 2 years of Ngaio Marsh challenges, some of us want to read the rest of the series as buddy reads.

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Archive: Ngaio Marsh Buddy Reads

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Aug 16, 2018 Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore added it

Shelves: murder, mystery, ngaio-marsh, roderick-alleyn, series

This is book 25 of the Inspector Alleyn mysteries and a revisit for me. This is told somewhat differently than the other Roderick Alleyn books I’ve read so far, starting with Alleyn recounting a case in which his wife Troy became unwittingly involved. The setting is a river cruise that Troy decides to take at the spur of the moment wanting to get away from things for a bit since she has just had her one-man show, and her husband and son are both away. Aboard the board, she feels things are amiss This is book 25 of the Inspector Alleyn mysteries and a revisit for me. This is told somewhat differently than the other Roderick Alleyn books I’ve read so far, starting with Alleyn recounting a case in which his wife Troy became unwittingly involved. The setting is a river cruise that Troy decides to take at the spur of the moment wanting to get away from things for a bit since she has just had her one-man show, and her husband and son are both away. Aboard the board, she feels things are amiss but when she reports what bothered her to local police stations at each stop, it feels as though they are trivial things. But when a fellow passenger suddenly leaves the boat, and before long turns up dead, a full fledged murder investigation begins. And the lady in question had been trying to communicate something to Troy. Alleyn we know from the start is on the trail of an art thief and criminal, Foljambe, and he is one of the fellow-passengers on the boat, but which one?

As I said, this was one I’d read before but I didn’t really remember much about it, in fact it didn’t even come back to me as I read, so the surprise elements remained surprises. I enjoyed the setting; though it was a cruise, it very much reminded me of Three Men on a Boat, without of course the humorous elements of that book. I also liked the idea of the Constable (painter John Constable) landscapes and the involvement of his style of painting in the whole matter. But the book itself overall was just an ok read for me. The mystery element did have a believable enough solution but didn’t feel like something out of the ordinary. Marsh did get me to suspect various characters though, casting obvious suspicion on some and hinting at other directions. Troy’s attitude with the victim and with some of the others on the boat was human certainly, but I felt one would have expected a somewhat different reaction from one who has possibly been involved in mysteries before (I haven’t read the whole of the series nor enough of it in order to be completely right on this point, but still). The book touches on the issue of racism but more in the context of showing different attitudes at that point in time (perhaps also trying to highlight the ‘right’ attitude), comparable in some ways to what we see even now. The characters had their individual traits and suspicious aspects too, but again nothing that really stood out to me especially. Nice enough read but nothing great. Three and a half stars.
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Jan 15, 2020 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is the 25th Roderick Alleyn mystery, first published in 1968. I have been reading through the entire Alleyn series, and I think that Marsh had a sort of second wind in the Sixties.

This book sees Agatha Troy, Alleyn’s wife, on her own, with both Alleyn and their son away. Having just been working on her latest show (Troy, for those who are not aware of the series, is an artist) she comes across a five day cruise on the River Trent and decides, impulsively, to go. There are, of course, a mixe ...more

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Aug 19, 2016 Teri-K rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: great-to-re-read, mystery-golden-age, mystery

This is one of my favorite books in an excellent series. I enjoy the way Marsh keeps both Troy and Roderick in the story though they are separated for much of the novel. I also like the frame of Alleyn teaching this to policemen in a class. I think creating a murder during a houseboat vacation is very clever - it's a twist on the usual isolated country house. And all of the characters are well drawn and quite interesting. In addition, the mystery is genuinely mysterious, as are most of Marsh's s ...more

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Feb 20, 2022 Bev rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, vintage-mystery, mount-tbr-2022, bought-2017, british-mystery

Troy Alleyn, wife of Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, decides to take a small break after a big art show in London. She sees an advertisement for a last-minute opening on a five-day cruise along an English river aboard the M. V. Zodiac. She hopes to relax and enjoy the slow-paced journey.

Meanwhile, Alleyn is in the United States on the track of an international criminal who goes by the nickname "Jampot." A criminal with several murders to his credit along with a trade in narcotics an Troy Alleyn, wife of Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, decides to take a small break after a big art show in London. She sees an advertisement for a last-minute opening on a five-day cruise along an English river aboard the M. V. Zodiac. She hopes to relax and enjoy the slow-paced journey.

Meanwhile, Alleyn is in the United States on the track of an international criminal who goes by the nickname "Jampot." A criminal with several murders to his credit along with a trade in narcotics and art forgeries. No one knows exactly who he is or what he looks like and he's known to be a meticulous planner and superb mimic with something unusual in his physical appearance. There are hints of Jampot-like activity in the U. S. But when it's discovered that the passenger who "cancelled" his Zodiac reservation at the last minute has been murdered in a way that bears all the hallmarks of Jampot, it looks like Alleyn is searching on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

Could Jampot be one of Troy's fellow passengers? There is a graphics expert with a clubfoot, a most inquisitive cleric with only one eye, a "swivel-eyed*" butterfly enthusiast, and an Ethiopian doctor with an interest in skin dyeing. Of course, the rumors of an unusual physical appearance may have been intentionally circulated to mislead...When a second passenger dies and there is reason to believe she has met her fate at the hands of the international criminal as well, Alleyn becomes concerned about Troy's safety and heads back to England post-haste. He arrives in time to save her, but not soon enough to prevent one final death...

For the most part, this story is told from the point of view of Agatha Troy Alleyn--which makes it unusual an unusual entry in the Marsh mysteries. Framing this main narrative are take-way shots to Alleyn giving a police lecture (about a year later) on Jampot's criminal activities and eventual capture. On the plus side: I enjoyed the difference in telling the story from Troy's point of view. Those sections of the book where we were on the boat and following her adventures were delightful. Marsh does a good job reflecting Troy's "artist's eye" for detail in those portions of the book. What doesn't work so well: the framing of the story with Alleyn's lectures on the investigation. The insertion of these scenes were jarring and took me completely out of the story. It was also evident that Alleyn wanted to kick Carmichael's bottom (the listener in the second row) and I wish he had done and gotten it over with. That running theme was also incredibly distracting and, frankly, unnecessary.

The plot, once we swallow the incredible coincidence of the wife of the celebrated Inspector Alleyn sharing a river voyage with a criminal mastermind, is interesting enough, though I'm not quite sold on why we had to take a river cruise to try out our art forgery stunts (and there's another lovely coincidence--not only do we have the wife of an inspector aboard--but we have the famous artist Troy along on cruise where art forgery will figure heavily!). Perhaps it's because I've read this before (though it's been about 35 years or so and I really didn't feel like "oh yeah, I remember--that's who did it..."), but I spotted the villain immediately and absolutely knew that his next victim was about to be knocked off. It didn't spoil my enjoyment of the river trip account, so I can put this down as a nice, solid read.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. ...more

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Feb 14, 2020 ShanDizzy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Interestingly, the structure of the story is told through a series of lectures that inspector Alleyn is giving in the United States at a police training seminar. Troy wrote some of letters to him while she was on a 5-day cruise in 'Constable' country in the east of England. Alleyn quotes from them during his lecture.

Excerpt from a letter - Ramsdyke. An incident. We were all on deck and the lock people and our Tom were doing their things with paddles and gates and all, and I noticed on the far b ...more

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Oct 24, 2015 Ellen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-sleuth, marsh, mystery-roderick-alleyn

Clutch of Constables by Ngaio Marsh.

Troy Alleyn, wife of Superintendent Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, has been fortunate enough to book passage at the last minute on the Zodiac due to a cancellation. The cruise is a five days journey from Norminster to Longminster by way of the three canals.

The passengers included on this short journey were a rather talkative middle aged woman, a brother and sister from the States, a butterfly collector, an Ethiopian doctor from Liverpool, a clergyman from A ...more

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Jul 12, 2021 Peggy rated it liked it

It’s fun rereading these. I forgot how much I liked Marsh’s writing. She wrote into the early 70s and the later ones do not seem dated, but if their time, yet she is so much a product of an earlier Britain. I really do like Alleyn and Br’er Fox.

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