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False Scent (Roderick Alleyn, #21)

Ngaio Marsh

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Jun 14, 2018 Nanosynergy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british, mysteries-thrillers-espionage, series, fiction, fiction-1950s, 2018read

An aging stage actress facing her 50th birthday, a wealthy husband, a ward who is a successful playwright, a young new actress who is his love interest, a milieu of playwrights and fans, a gift of expensive perfume, and a bottle of deadly poison to kill bugs on plants = a formula for a murder (or two).

Phrase Marsh uses in several of her books: "nod like a mandarin" - it sounds politically insensitive. I only found one mention of what it meant online so far "nod in exaggeration, nod urgently and ...more

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Feb 22, 2023 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: author-white, a-reviewed, author-woman, 4-star, zchallenge-2023-52bookclub, publdate-1950s, genre-crime, europe-uk, world-newzealand, z-read-gelesen-2023

I seem to be on a roll with Anglophone women writers from earlier generations. Daphne du Maurier. Nina Bawden. Slightly fusty. Old-fashioned editions / prose / attitudes. Am digging around in my shelves to find more of them. Dodie Smith next?

Finished the book. It is the first Ngaio (pronounced Nyeoh, Maori name) Marsh novel I've read and may well not be the last as I enjoyed it quite a bit. I don't usually love puzzle mystery Krimis but this one had a breezy style, snappy dialogue and a truckloa ...more

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