Author Information
Ngaio Marsh's Latest Book

Newest Release

  • Bibliography:
    38 Books (1 Series)
  • First Book:
    January 1934
  • Latest Book:
    July 2023
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Full Series List in Order

A Roderick Alleyn Mystery

1 - A Man Lay Dead (1934)
2 - Enter a Murderer (1935)
3 - The Nursing Home Murder (1936)
4 - Death in Ecstasy (1936)
5 - Vintage Murder (1972)
6 - Artists in Crime (1938)
7 - Death in a White Tie (1938)
8 - Overture to Death (1939)
9 - Death at the Bar (1940)
10 - Death of a Peer // A Surfeit of Lampreys (1940)
11 - Death and the Dancing Footman (1941)
12 - Colour Scheme (1943)
13 - Died in the Wool (1945)
13.5 - I Can Find My Way Out (1987)
14 - Final Curtain (1947)
15 - A Wreath for Rivera // Swing, Brother, Swing (1949)
16 - Opening Night // Night at the Vulcan (1951)
17 - Spinsters in Jeopardy (1953)
18 - Scales of Justice (1955)
19 - Death of a Fool (1956)
20 - Singing in the Shrouds (1958)
21 - False Scent (1959)
22 - Hand in Glove (1962)
23 - Dead Water (1963)
24 - Death at the Dolphin // Killer Dolphin (1966)
25 - Clutch of Constables (1969)
26 - When in Rome (1971)
27 - Tied Up in Tinsel (1972)
28 - Black As He's Painted (1974)
29 - Last Ditch (1977)
30 - Grave Mistake (Oct-1978)
31 - Photo-Finish (1980)
32 - Light Thickens (Sep-1982)
33 - Money in the Morgue (Mar-2018)

Book List in Order: 38 titles



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    When Sir Hubert Handesley invited his well-to-do friends to his country estate for an amusing weekend. no one suspected it would turn into a deadly ordeal. But one of the participants in the supposedly playful Murder Game turns up dead ...and Scotlan...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    The new play at the Unicorn was the gala event of the year--until the final act left the audience stunned and an actor dead. Who put real bullets in the gun? Only two people had access to the prop box, and one of them was the victim. Inspector Alleyn...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    Among many strange sects and places of worship in London perhaps one of the strangest was the group that met every Sunday evening at the House of the Sacred Flame on Knocklatchers Row. At one of the special monthly services, Cara Quayne was chosen t...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    A politician lay dead on the operating table. And there's certainly no shortage of suspects. But just which one is the best candidate for the gallows? Soon the tenacious Inspector Roderick Alleyn is following a convoluted path from 10 Downing Street ...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    When murder upsets the creative tranquility of an artists' colony, Scotland Yard sends in its most famous investigator. And what begins as a routine case turns out to be the most momentous of Roderick Alieyn's career. For before he can corner the kil...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    Lady Carrados' glittering gala was the social event of the season, with a guest list that would make Buckingham Palace envious. But then death crashed the party and Lord Gospell was found dead under strange circumstances. Chief Inspector Alleyn steps...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    Just before the curtain went up on an amateur production to raise money for a new church piano, the old one went off with a bang--polishing off a local spinster as she struck the opening chords of the overture. The suspects were familiar figures in a...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    After an evening of friendly darts and vintage brandy, a distinguished, although amorous, barrister is in no condition to drive--or walk. The poor fellow's expired--leaving one less lawyer in the world. Everyone in the cozy pub swears that the untime...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    There was no doubt the Lampreys were charmers who sported the grand style and didn't have a shilling. But when Lord Charles Lamprey's rich old brother met an untimely end, the question was raised -- were they also coldblooded killers? Some words b...






    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    When the jaded millionaire threw a house party--just a few mortal enemies at his Christmas card manor--he flung open the doors to murder. Once again, Inspector Alleyn walks on thin ice, since all the guests have reasons to play a killer's game....



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    England is at war, and this means "spy fever" for a quarrelsome collection of patriots at a shabby New Zealand resort. Inspector Roderick Alleyn joins them incognito when their amateurish sleuthing results in a macabre murder that shocks even Scotla...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    AN M.P. MEETS A WOOLLY DEMISE Member of Parliament Florence Rubrick has had the wool pulled over her eyes--quite literally. She's been found dead, her body pressed into a bale of wool. When Inspector Alleyn pays a visit to her New Zealand country ...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    Beautiful Troy Alleyn, artist wife of the Inspector, had been warned about the famed old Shakespearean actor--and his eccentric household. But she was not prepared for their acts of malice and mischief. Now Sir Henry was dead, after a large and le...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    Lord Pastern invited his society friends to a swank London nightclub to watch him stage one of his bizarre jokes. But when the joke turned into the "accidental" death of a band member, the laughter stopped. For the audience, it was an open-and-shut c...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    It's more than opening night jitters. The leading man is found dead after the very first performance. Was it suicide or homicide? Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn takes center stage in the investigation of the unlucky actor's dramatic demise...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    For Inspector Roderick Alleyn, the trip was to be official; for his family, a Mediterranean romp. But a plot torn from the pages of a Gothic novel soon engulfed them all. Alleyn's son was kidnapped. A very wealthy spinster was murdered. And in an ...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    The village of Swevenings was an English pastoral paradise, with its green landscape, family histories, and meandering trout stream. But even the quietest waters can be bloodied... Inspector Roderick Alleyn soon discovers that murder among the blu...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    Someone's added a new flourish to South Mardian's annual sword dance. One of the dancers in the performance has been neatly decapitated. But was it murder... or magic? In a village so totally populated by eccentrics, anything's believable, and everyo...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    First, there was high-pitched singing ... and then a woman's body was found, covered with flowers. Three victims had already fallen before Scotland Yard's Roderick Alleyn set out on a luxury cruiser for South Africa, convinced that the musical murder...






    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    When the beloved "queen of British theatre" is murdered in a cloud of perfume, the case literally reeks with likely suspects .. .and it is up to the indomitable Inspector Roderick Alleyn to sniff out the motives and bring the killer to justice....



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    Lady Bantling had a talent for outrageous parties, but she never dreamed her treasure hunt would end in mayhem -- with a famous lawyer dead beyond a shadow of a doubt. Who planned this heinous happening? Inspector Alleyn probes the alibis of so...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    When a week of death threats at a faith-healing resort ends in a ghastly murder, Inspector Roderick Alleyn is faced with the most puzzling, and painful, case of his career. For, of the two main suspects, one is his oldest friend -- and the other is t...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    The unearthing of a priceless Shakespearean prop inspires a hit play, the reopening of a jewel box theater -- and a grisly robbery-murder. The celebrated cast members are the prime suspects of Scotland Yard's ingenious Inspector Alleyn -- who mus...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    A cruise on a sleepy English river is the scene of a killingly brilliant art-forgery plot, and Inspector Roderick Alleyn realizes that one of the passengers is the elusive mimic-murderer "Jampot." But which one? Alleyn has five days to find out, befo...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    MURDER TAKES A ROMAN HOLIDAY On an exclusive guided tour of Rome's ancient ruins, a motley crew of tourists gets more than the price of admission. For amidst the serpentine passages of an underground crypt, the shady tour guide disappears, a myste...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    The acclaimed author brings us crime at a country-house Christmas party in “one of her best and most baffling mysteries” (Daily Express). It’s the Christmas season in 1972, and Agatha Troy is at a house party, enjoying the local holiday pageant...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    Suddenly, a jeroboam of champagne crashes down at the cast party bashing in the famous producer's head. Who planned this horrible spectacle? Was it his wife? Her lover, the leading man? The not-so-innocent ingenue? Inspector Alleyn goes backstage ...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    TRIBAL TREACHERY The president of an African republic is planning a good-will mission to England, and someone seems intent on including murder in his itinerary! Inspector Alleyn, normally exempt from duty on security protection, finds himself ...



    • / Police Procedural
    • Buy Buy

    THE FATAL CLUE Inspector Roderick Alleyn's novelist son Ricky thought he had inherited none of his famous father's detective powers. Writing was his forte, and a picturesque British island off the coast of France seemed the perfect place to begin ...






  • Greengages Hotel was a sumptuous sanctuary for the super-rich. Until its most pampered hypochondriac took the cure. And then her life. Or did she? To find out, Scotland Yard sends Superintendent Alleyn to knock at the gilded gates where murder ...



    • / Law Enforcement
    • Buy Buy

    La Sommita, the world's most famous soprano, has been murdered, stabbed with her own stiletto. It's a picture-perfect crime, right down to the photograph of the deceased placed strategically at the scene. Now Inspector Alleyn must find the soprano...



  • "TURN, HELL-HOUND, TURN!" The fight. Leap, clash, sweep; hoarse, snarling voices. Macbeth is beaten backward, Macduff raises his claymore, and they plunge out of sight. A scream. A thud. Silence. Seyton carries his claidheamh-mor and on it, str...



    • / General Fiction
    • Buy Buy

    "

    “An absolutely first-rate anthology. . . a thoughtful and intelligent paean to crime fiction.” — New York Sun

    #1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George serves up a century''s worth of superb crim...



  • The only collection of Ngaio Marsh short stories, first published in 1995 to celebrate her centenary, now with two additional stories. A man dies with his hand on a radio dial. A disguised aristocrat finds murder at the opening night of a play. A cry...



  • Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime''s first book, the first volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries.A MAN LAY DEADSir Hubert Handesley''s extravagant weekend house-parties are de...



  • A collection of short stories written by Ngaio Marsh; a number of them feature Inspector Alleyn, the protagonist of Marsh's famous mystery series. Included as well is a television script written by Marsh and the very first short story Marsh ever publ...



  • This novel of murder and espionage in World War II New Zealand is “an exquisite reminder of the brilliance of Marsh’s London detective” (The Guardian).Inspector Roderick Alleyn just wants to write a letter to his wife, but World War II, for one...



  • Three witty murder mysteries featuring British Inspector Roderick Alleyn, from a Mystery Writers of America Grand Master.Surfeit of Lampreys: The upper-crust Lamprey family exemplifies charm, wit, and a chronic lack of funds. Their only source o...


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ngaio Marsh has published 38 books.

Ngaio Marsh does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Roderick Alleyn Mysteries, was published in July 2023.

The first book by Ngaio Marsh, A Man Lay Dead, was published in January 1934.

Yes. Ngaio Marsh has 1 series.