The Nursing Home Murder — Ngaio Marsh

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 to an illicit love nest to unmask a simply horrifying killer!

AMPHITHEATER OF DEATH

The scene: a London hospital's operating room. The patient awaiting surgery is Sir Derek O'Callaghan, the controversial Home Secretary, who is sponsoring a Bill which has earned him a host of political enemies. The surgeon is Sir John Phillips who has strong personal reasons to hate Sir Derek. By an irony of fate, the nurse in attendance is Jane Harden, Sir Derek's discarded mistress, who has openly threatened to kill him.

This is the tangled skein of motives which confronts Chief-Inspector Roderick Alleyn when Sir Derek dies under suspicious circumstances. With his able assistant, Fox, Alleyn must solve a puzzling crime which threatens to become a cause celebre, one the mixes medicine and mayhem against a background of London high society.