Light Thickens

By Ngaio Marsh

The complete series of Ngaio Marsh reissues concludes with the re-publication of this 20th anniversary edition of this, her final novel.

Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of Macbeth, the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck. But one night the claymore swings and the dummy's head is more than real: murder behind the scene. Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Jun 10, 2010
• ISBN: 9780007344871

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 Light Thickens

[auntie0nanuuq · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Ngaio Marsh was a contemporary of Agatha Christie & Margery Allingham... there was fierce competition in the ability to write a literary mystery... one that would appeal to the more educated society as well.... and here we have one revolving the production of Macbeth.

So far.... this book begins with the rehearsal of the Shakespearean play Macbeth. We are getting to know the actors their pasts, relationships w/ the other cast members.....and personally, I just might be able to live without this. But I do understand that Ms. Marsh is deftly preparing the scene......

1/2 way through now, and some shady goings on during rehearsals..... more listening to actors' conversations.... and this is just boring.

FINALLY..... having to read the first 231 pages was PAINFUL.... 232, we have a murder and we get to the heart of the mystery, instead of a story about the Drama of Macbeth & the players!

I liked the last part of the book, the actual murder & mystery... I then understood the beginning "pranks", which for all intent & purposes served as a Red Herrings for the motive of the murder.... The clues to the murder are there... as I read the ending, I realized what was actually being oh-so-subtly being pointed out.

Overall, this bored me to tears... I just wanted to get to the point/heart of the story.... So I''m grading this down and not taking into the book's literary merit at all!

[catym_14 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As rehearsals for a performance of Macbeth get under way, strange things start to happen. Strange and deeply unpleasant things. Superstitions lend a sinister edge to shocking pranks ... shocking pranks feed superstitions ... tensions mount ... and finally one night the claymore is used for real.The murder and resolution in this story take up only the last hundred pages, and make a novella-sized plot. That doesn't mean, however, that the first half of the book is unengaging or superfluous. Marsh builds up the tension in a remarkable way, and creates a strong and chilling sense of impending doom. The characters are reasonably well developed but not brilliant, and the final resolution is perhaps a tad anticlimactic, but on the whole it's a very entertaining book.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Director Peregrine Jay and his management team have put together a superior cast for a run of Macbeth at the Dolphin Theatre. Tension builds as the cast rehearses for several weeks before opening night, with a prankster taking advantage of the superstition surrounding the play to sow discord. A few weeks into the play’s run, the unthinkable happens, and one of the actors is found dead at the end of the performance. Scotland Yard’s Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience that night. Despite being on the scene when the murder was committed, Alleyn is as baffled as anyone. Alleyn knows as well as anyone that this isn’t the first time that death has visited the Dolphin.Marsh takes her time setting the stage for the murder, which doesn’t occur until more than halfway through the book. She treats readers a Cliffsnotes-like summary of Macbeth, with much focus on the interpretation and staging of the play during rehearsals. How the reader feels about Shakespeare may influence how much the reader enjoys this book.

[herenya_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Light Thickens, published in 1982, was Ngaio Marsh's last murder mystery featuring the detective Roderick Alleyn. (I'm not sure when it is supposed to be set - most of the her mysteries are set around the time they were written, but if that was the case for this one, Alleyn would be in his 80s and surely he'd have retired by then? Not that it matters.)It is about a production of Macbeth at the Dolphin theatre (which features in Death at the Dolphin; apparently this is set 20 years later). The slow brimming tensions of the production are simultaneously fascinating and mundane. Because the murder occurs so late in the book, there's not room for the same exploration of character and motive in many of Marsh's other mysteries. The murder is solved with comparative ease.Technically, it is a clever mystery, but in terms of the characters' psychology, I found it disappointing. There isn't much of a web of secrets to uncover; most of the characters' relationships with each other are surprisingly straightforward. I suspect the story loses something by focusing so much on Peregrine, the director, and his wife, who despite Peregrine's directorial powers, are observers more than actual participants in the unfolding drama. There's no real tension there.That said, it seems appropriate that Marsh's final mystery was set in a theatre - moreover, a theatre staging Macbeth.(After I read this, I decided it wasn't worth going out of my way to look for the few Marsh mysteries I haven't yet read... but then someone recommended Vintage Murder and I changed my mind about that.)

[mysterymax_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As a mystery, 3 stars. As a book about Macbeth 5 stars!

[alanteder · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Investigation of the Scottish PlayReview of the Felony & Mayhem paperback edition (2016) of the 1982 originalNew Zealander Ngaio Marsh earned her "Damery" not through her lifetime of writing but through her promotion of theatre. It is fitting then that the swan song of her Scotland Yard CID detective Roderick Alleyn should be wrapped up in the world of theatre as well. In Light Thickens, Alleyn is even on hand to witness the crime as a member of the audience seeing a performance of Shakespeare's Macbeth, which is known among superstitious theatre folk as The Scottish Play as it is considered a bad omen to say the name of the play or to even quote it offstage.A considerable amount of the plot is spent in observing and describing the actors and rehearsals as they prepare for their performance of the play at the Dolphin Theatre. The setting also marks a return to the place and some of the characters of Death at the Dolphin (1966) (also published as Killer Dolphin in some markets). This aspect may not be of interest to all mystery fans, as quite a lot of time is spent dissecting character motivations and the most effective theatrical effects for the play. Personally I found it all the more fascinating for this extra behind the scenes detail of the theatrical world. The opening witches scene with the 3 characters plucking body parts off of a hanged man on a gibbet and then flying off into the air (actually a jump off a riser to mattresses below) sounded particularly atmospheric. It brought back memories of the most dramatic Macbeth that I have ever seen, which was one by Robert Lepage at Toronto's Hart House Theatre where the three witches opened the play by dropping from the rafters while suspended upside down and reciting their lines from the same position.My reading of Light Thickens was part of my project to read or re-read some of the classics from the Golden Age of Crime. It also made me eager to see live theatre once more when the situation of the current pandemic has stabilized.

[janerawoof · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This discard from the public library was a serendipitous choice. I was glad I decided to take this enjoyable novel home with me. This, the last work of Dame Ngaio, was a murder mystery involving a theater company presenting a production of Macbeth. For all of Part 1, the book showed in detail how a theatrical production is put together from its earliest stages of reading, blocking, lighting, props management, through rehearsals, to final, polished performance. We glimpse some of a director's ideas of how to interpret the play through acting. The cast chime in with their thoughts. All through the novel, the superstitions concerning ill-luck surrounding the Scottish play are emphasized and foreshadow the murder and decapitation of the leading actor, which don't occur until Part 2. The deed is done with a claidheamh-mor [claymore] used in the Macbeth/Macduff fight to the death. The novel did bog down, but picked up again with the murder and Chief Superintendent Alleyn's investigation. Before the murder there were odd occurrences. One of the actors termed them "schoolboy pranks". There were an accident involving the director, Peregrine Jay; a fake head in the King's [Banquo's] room; a head in the meat dish in the banquet scene; a rat in the bag of one of the Witches where they keep the items for their curses and potions. Alleyn just happens to be in the audience when the murder occurs, so he takes over the investigation. He has the cast reenact parts of the play to establish timing and alibis. The case stumps him, until he gets an idea of 'whodunnit' from a clue his son inadvertently supplies, through a game with the boy's brother and the boy actor who plays Macduff's son.Each character had perhaps one distinguishing characteristic. None was what I'd call 'deep.' The author wrote crisp dialogue, and I thought the book well plotted. I thought it strange to hold off on crime and investigation, so far into the story, but I did like the description on producing a play and insights into Macbeth. This book has led me to want to investigate more of this author's work.

[figgles_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Set in Ngaio Marsh's beloved world of the theatre this is the second book featuring Peregrine Jay, theatre producer, (introduced in "Death at the Dolphin"). Here a long running production of MacBeth comes to a startling end, just when Superintent Alleyn is in the audience. The first half of the book is devoted to setting the scene with a loving description of creation of a stage production, I enjoyed this but it may not suit readers who like the body to be discovered on the first page... All in all a most enjoyable read.

[benfulton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The immense detail of the acting out of the Scottish play makes the book especially enjoyable. The murderer is more or less inevitable, and the entire murder mystery really doesn't last more than the second half of the book. A solid entry from a great mystery writer.

[thesmellofbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A delightful offering for the lover of English mysteries (ignoring the fact that Marsh was a Kiwi), and particularly for one who loves the theatrical life and Shakespeare. It is rare for the "background" to be so integral to the entire book. Marsh, a theatre person herself, brings insight, detail, and delight to the functioning of the theatre, the meaning of MacBeth, and the people who strive for artistic perfection in their work.

[catherinestead · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As rehearsals for a performance of Macbeth get under way, strange things start to happen. Strange and deeply unpleasant things. Superstitions lend a sinister edge to shocking pranks ... shocking pranks feed superstitions ... tensions mount ... and finally one night the claymore is used for real.The murder and resolution in this story take up only the last hundred pages, and make a novella-sized plot. That doesn't mean, however, that the first half of the book is unengaging or superfluous. Marsh builds up the tension in a remarkable way, and creates a strong and chilling sense of impending doom. The characters are reasonably well developed but not brilliant, and the final resolution is perhaps a tad anticlimactic, but on the whole it's a very entertaining book.

[eat_read_knit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As rehearsals for a performance of Macbeth get under way, strange things start to happen. Strange and deeply unpleasant things. Superstitions lend a sinister edge to shocking pranks ... shocking pranks feed superstitions ... tensions mount ... and finally one night the claymore is used for real.The murder and resolution in this story take up only the last hundred pages, and make a novella-sized plot. That doesn't mean, however, that the first half of the book is unengaging or superfluous. Marsh builds up the tension in a remarkable way, and creates a strong and chilling sense of impending doom. The characters are reasonably well developed but not brilliant, and the final resolution is perhaps a tad anticlimactic, but on the whole it's a very entertaining book.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a nice read. The writing flows, the mystery develops well, a couple of the characters are very likable and the details of producing a play are interesting. That being said, I felt a little let down in the end. Not enough Inspector Alleyn, it seemed as if the mystery could have been solved without him, not enough fleshing out of the interesting members of the cast.

[littletaiko · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A nice end to the series. The usual group of Fox, Bailey, and Thompson were there as they should have been with only a casual mention of Alleyn's wife (not a character I've ever warmed to). The book revisits one of my favorite characters, Peregrine Jay. He is staging a production of Macbeth and dealing with the usual problems associated with the play, particuarly the superstitions surrounding the play. It takes over a hundred pages before a murder occurs and the who done it part seemed too easy. However, I didn't care as I was too interested in the informative look at how a play is produced. I'm going to miss Alleyn and the gang.

[alibrarian_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Somehow I have never read a Ngaio Marsh mystery before and I found her last novel to have been very enjoyable. The murder doesn't occur until well into the second half of the book, but I was enjoying all the detail on the staging of Macbeth and the characters of the actors involved. I'm looking forward to reading more of her mysteries.