Final Curtain

By Ngaio Marsh

A country house murder, artistic insight and the post-war reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh’s wittiest and most readable novel.

Agatha Troy, world famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies.

The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in – in the person of Troy’s long-absent husband, Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Oct 29, 2009
• ISBN: 9780007344611

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 Final Curtain

[mmyoung_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Ultimately a let down. Much of this book is written as an examination of a particular type of English upper class family -- a family that wallows in the "specialness" and whose eccentricities are accepted where similar behaviour would be considered acceptable in members of another class. Marsh's obsession with this type of family goes back to her earliest books. Behaviour that would be considered narcissistic and even pathological is presented as tragic, annoying but charming or quirky if expressed by members of the correct class and educational background. If the book were simply an examination of this type of family -- caught in amber at the last moment in time in which they could exist -- this book would be interesting. Marsh's need to cram a murder mystery into this scenario ultimates results in the book ending in a damp squib rather than a explosion let alone a satisfying conclusion.Books like this underline how much Marsh's Scotland Yard and her detectives are mired in a world that was already dying before WWII and was moribund by the time this book reached publication.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this more than the other Marsh mysteries I've read. More character to it.