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Often regarded as her most interesting book and set on New Zealand’s North Island, Ngaio Marsh herself considered this to be her best-written novel.
It was a horrible death – Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.
Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles he’d hated, the New Zealanders he’d despised or the Maoris he’d insulted. Even the spies he’d thwarted – if he wasn’t a spy himself…
‘The brilliant Ngaio Marsh ranks with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers’Times Literary Supplement -
‘The queen of the straight crime novel - long may she reign!’Sunday Times -
‘The brilliant New Zealander Ngaio Marsh claims a high level as to sheer writing and still more as a view of humanity.’Elizabeth Bowen -
‘Nobody begins to touch Ngaio Marsh’s skill at creating corpses and suspects… her dialogue is a continuous delight.’New York Herald Tribune -
‘The finest writer in the English languange of the pure, classical puzzle whodunnit. Among the crime queens, Ngaio Marsh stands out as an Empress.’The Sun -