The Nursing Home Murder

By Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh’s bestselling and ingenious third novel remains one of the most popular pieces of crime fiction of all time.

Sir John Phillips, the Harley Street surgeon, and his beautiful nurse Jane Harden are almost too nervous to operate. The emergency case on the table before them is the Home Secretary – and they both have very good, personal reasons to wish him dead.

Within hours he does die, although the operation itself was a complete success, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn must find out why…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Sep 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9780007344413

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 The Nursing Home Murder

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really this deserves 4 1/2 stars... Good fast-paced plot with plenty of twists. Stands up well to rereading too.

[fmrox · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Enjoyable dive into Ngaio Marsh. First read of her novels. Less stuffy than Christie's characters. A reasonable shorter classic mystery police procedural. I don't feel I know the main protagonist very well, Inspector Alleyn but I definitely will read another Marsh to see about him. The pot was complicated enough with many players. However, Marsh did a fine job keeping the characters described so you did not forget who is who.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I felt a little let down at the solution of this one. Not sure why. Not exactly blind-sided, I don't think the author was unfair. Perhaps I wanted more drama.

[Heather Ratcliff · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Marsh is an excellent constructor of mysteries - another clear success.

[musicmom41 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Another early book, published after Enter a Murderer, because it refers us back to this book as well as to A Man Lay Dead, which now I must try to find & read. Nigel Bathgate and Angela North play a big port in this story about Home Secretary being murdered during an emergency appendectomy. It is amazing how many people in that operating room had motives to kill him. Is it personal, the surgeon whose nurse whom he loves has been seduced and discarded by the HS, or the nurse herself, or is it political the Communist assisting nurse whose rejoices when he dies. Or can there be another motive as yet not discovered? Bathgate and North get to attend a Communist rally with Alleyn in search of clues. It was an interesting picture of the Communist movement in England in the 1930’s. From the references in the book I think A Man Lay Dead also deals with this situation.

[cmbohn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Sir Derek O'Callaghan is in the middle of pushing through an important bill when he becomes ill with appendicitis. The surgery appears to be a success, but he dies soon after. It sounds like an accident, but his widow is convinced that his enemies got him. The police aren't convinced - until the post-mortem. And after they begin to invesigate, they find no shortage of enemies to choose from. Inspector Alleyn is on the job. I really enjoyed this one and was stumped as to how it was done. Fox was also in this one, and I like him.CMB