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There's nothing like a classic. I recently read my first Ngaio Marsh novel, the second of the Roderick Alleyn tales, Enter A Murderer. Somehow I've never managed to see even the PBS/Brit TV episodes. In this 1935 adventure, Inspector Allen and his sidekick journalist Nigel Bathgate are the scene of a murder that takes place, literally, on stage to a packed house. The dialogue is delicious and the twists-and-turns great fun. Marsh had a solid bead on theatrical people and conjures them up in a delightful manner. Her style is also a reminder of how British mystery writers -- from Agatha Christie to Ian Rankin -- often add a special "readability" ingredient: the way one word follows another reflects an intelligence and "groundedness" not often found elsewhere outside of so-called "literary fiction".
Another discovery from a much more contemporary writer is the Death On Demand novels starring Annie Laurence, the proprietor of a bookshop on the South Carolina coast by Carolyn B Hart. The first title, appropriately called Death On Demand, introduces the characters (including Agatha the cat, and Max Darling, a love interest) and the delightful setting of Broward's Rock, a yuppyish community filled with golf courses, mystery writers and corpses -- no less than four in this opening tale! Hart is constantly quoting from the work of other mystery writers, naming names, characters, plots and titles ... and even includes a "contest" to "name that novel" based on five pictures hanging in the coffee shop section of the bookstore. If all is revealed in a rather conventional ending, the working out, and the characters, make for a splendid read. The series has reached 20 titles (!) since 1987 and I will certainly be adding more to my TBR list.
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