11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Cruising with a Queen of Crime, September 23, 2008
This review is from: Clutch of Constables (St. Martin's Dead Letter Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)
Anyone who loves the classic detection novel is probably familiar with the so-called "Queens of Crime" -- Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. During the second and third quarters of the twentieth century these writers (all British with the partial exception of New Zealander Marsh) played a significant role in creating the genre.
Marsh, whose real love was the theater, wrote 32 crime and detection novels featuring the gentlemanly Detective Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn. While most of her novels follow the traditional formula,
Clutch of Constables (Roderick Alleyn Mysteries) strays a bit outside the usual pattern. While Alleyn is out of the country investigating an art forgery ring, his wife, painter Agatha Troy, fills in a few free days by impulsively booking a cruise on a winding English river. Her companions on this cruise are a brilliantly strange company played large enough to reach the back benches; many of Marsh's books have a theatrical setting but none of her characters are more stage-ready than this riverboat crowd.
The story is told in flashback format as Alleyn lectures on the case to students; for most of the riverboat story Alleyn is present only in his wife's letters to him. This book offers fans a chance to know Agatha Troy better and is a well done detection puzzle with red herrings and psychological overtones. Its greatest pleasure for me is the hypnotic winding river cruise, with landscape features dreamily going in and out of the scene with the river's turns. Of any book on my shelf, this is among the best suited to read during a jangled, stressful time; I feel myself slowing down, the river working its magic and the momentum of discovery taking us closer to the inevitable solution. Recently I needed to read this book yet again and it did its work as always.
If you are new to Dame Ngaio, this is not the most "representative" book to start with. I'd recommend Surfeit of Lampreys, Death at the Bar, Final Curtain, Singing in the Shrouds; possibly Died in the Wool. But if you do decide on a Ngaio Marsh sampler, by all means include the charming and hypnotic Clutch of Constables -- which title incidentally refers not to English bobbies on bicycles but to the English landscape painter John Constable.
Linda Bulger, 2008
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good read!, August 8, 2001
While Ngaio Marsh was extremely adept at the traditional detective stories, often her best work occurred when she was able to step out of some of the traditional confines of the genre. There is no better example of this than in Clutch of Constables.
Action takes place during a cruise along an unnamed river in England. Chief Inspector Alleyn's (Marsh's hero for those new to her books) wife has center stage as she is at the center of events as murder(?) strikes within the confined space of the riverboat. Are her suspicions correct or just the result of over-wrought nerves? You be the judge. Here Ms. Marsh is freed from the "Introduction-Murder-Police Arrive-Suspects are questioned" narrative that sometimes haunts her work. Suspects are introduced, but we are unsure of what to suspect them of? The crime occurs far into the novel, and instead of the usual detective story of pursuing clues, we instead are left to examine the atmosphere on board the riverboat and the social interplay between a cast of characters all of which seem both innocent and slightly off-kilter at the same time. The seedier the character the less you suspect them, the more charming the character the more you suspet them. Some characters are so annoying you'd glady strangle them given half the chance.
Marsh successfully plays the psychological angle here as she expertly increases the tension with the result of at least one moment of genuine horror.
A good read.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not the best, but still a good way to pass time, August 21, 2000
This review is from: Clutch of Constables (St. Martin's Dead Letter Mystery) (Mass Market Paperback)
The format of this Marsh mystery differed a bit, in that it cut back and forth between Inspector Alleyn teaching a class and the case that he actually uses as an example, which incidentally, involves his wife Troy. Troy decides to take a breather after her London art show and sees that there is a last minute cancellation on a mini-cruise. She signs up for it, and realizes, shortly into the trip, that she may be on bored with a famous international criminal - one wanted for murder. But which one of her fellow passengers is "The Jampot"? Alleyn himself is in the States on business, so a good deal of the information is first learned through Troy's letters to him (an interesting change, since we usually see Alleyn's letters to Troy). But as he becomes more and more alarmed by her reports, he returns to try and catch the Jampot before yet another murder is committed.
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