Clutch of Constables

By Ngaio Marsh

A classic Ngaio Marsh novel which features blood-curdling murders in the confines of a riverboat, the Zodiac, cruising through Constable country.

’He looks upon the murders that he did in fact perform as tiresome and regrettable necessities,’ reflected Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn on the international crook known as ‘the Jampot’.

But it was Alleyn’s wife Troy who knew ‘the Jampot’ best: she had shared close quarters with him on the tiny pleasure steamer Zodiac on a cruise along the peaceful rivers of ‘Constable country’. And it was she who knew something was badly wrong even before Alleyn was called in to solve the two murders on board…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jan 7, 2010
• ISBN: 9780007344819

Ngaio Marsh

Dame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895 and died in February 1982. She wrote over 30 detective novels and many of her stories have theatrical settings, for Ngaio Marsh’s real passion was the theatre. She was both an actress and producer and almost single-handedly revived the New Zealand public’s interest in the theatre. It was for this work that the received what she called her ‘damery’ in 1966.

Reviews for Clutch of Constables

[nordie_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Rory Alleyn, giving a lecture, recounts a particularly interesting case involving his wife, art fraud, and a criminal team upon a boat.Alleyn's wife Troy, having just had an exhibit installed, is about to return to London when she sees a last minute cancellation on a 5 day boat trip around "Constable Country". Knowing that her husband is in America on a lecture tour, and that she would be returning to an empty flat after an exhausting time preparing for the show, she takes the trip on the spur of the moment.There she meets people of several different nationalities, including the English born doctor (of an Ethiopian father), an Australian priest, a rather annoying and intense English woman and an American brother and sister. Troy finds out that her cabin was to be taken by a Greek man who has subsequently found dead in London.Troy writes several letters to her husband, giving her impressions of not only the passengers but some of the peculiar events that happen to her in the first few days. Alleyn is back on the plane home by the time the first body is found.Troy is (conveniently) shipped off to a local hotel as the book's focus shifts to her husband and his investigation of racism, art forgery, murder and crime syndicates.This was an audiobook from Audible. and read by James Saxon (who has read other books, including others by Marsh). He is very capable in doing multiple accents and this certainly aids the "listening experience". (A brief look implies that he died in 2003).The multiple timelines was a little difficult to settle to (Alleyn giving a talk about a time he was in America giving a talk whilst his wife was getting involved in an art crime), but on the whole, it was a diverting and pleasant time spent.

[normadruid · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a delightful book, featuring a cruise on a small inland waterway in England. Marsh describes both the boat and the territory it passes through in loving detail. As with all the books featuring Troy Alleyn, you see things through the artist's eye. The inclusion of a black Englishman adds interest to the plot. Coming from the American South, I am always interested in how people handle race in other places.

[cmbohn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When Alleyn is out of town on police business, Troy goes on a peaceful river cruise which turns murderous. Very sinister in atmosphere.CMB

[catapogo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book a bit more than some of Marsh's other books, I think because Roderick and Agatha Troy were part of the story from the very beginning (rather than entering the action half way through like in most of the other books by her I've read). And the story itself was good, not who is guilty, but who is innocent.