Last Ditch [Mass Market Paperback]

Ngaio Marsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 2000

Horseplay turns deadly...

Young Ricky Alleyn has come to the picturesque fishing village of Deep Cove to write. Through the sleepy little town offers few diversions, Ricky manages to find the most distracting one of all: murder. For in a muddy ditch, he sees a dead equestrienne whose last leap was anything but an accident. And when Ricky himself disappears, the case becomes a horse of a different color for his father, Inspector Roderick Alleyn.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It's time to start comparing Christie to Marsh instead of the other way around." --New York magazine

About the Author

From her first book in 1934 to her final volume just before her death in 1982, Ngaio Marsh's work has remained legendary, and is often compared to that of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. During her celebrated fifty-year career, Marsh was made a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America, was named Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, won numerous prestigious awards, and penned 32 mystery novels.

Now St. Martin's Dead Letter Mysteries is thrilled to make all of Marsh's novels available again for old fans to relish and new ones to discover. So sit back, draw the curtains, lock the doors, and put yourself in the hands of Grande Dame of detective novels...

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books (January 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312972865
• ISBN-13: 978-0312972868
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #919,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Marsh's best work but still readable., September 15, 2008

By 

Patrick W. Crabtree "The Old Grottomaster" (Lucasville, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Last Ditch (Hardcover)

This is an Inspector Roderick Alleyn/Detective Fox entry. It's very late in Alleyn's career because he and his renowned artist wife, Agatha Troy, have a grown son, Ricky, who has traveled to an artist's retreat of sorts to write.

Ricky mixes with the locals which include a family of equestrians. The daughter, a concupiscent gal of local popularity with all the young men, is killed in a horse-riding episode. Ricky suspects that her death may not have been an accident based upon feedback from local residents.

Ricky also gets involved with a sarcastic aspiring young artist who appears to be involved in the drug trade. Subsequent to Rickey being involved in a near drowning, Alleyn and Fox show up to look into the drug allegations and the possible murder of the girl... then Rickey goes missing!

The scenario here is not the most believable cozy murder that Marsh ever wrote. Still I enjoyed it and can recommend it to fans.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Late Ngaio Marsh book-- three and a half stars., March 31, 2006

By 

frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Last Ditch (Mass Market Paperback)

This is one of the very latest Marsh books, written in 1977. (43 years after her first book!)

The story centers around Ricky Alleyn, the son of Roderick and Agatha Troy. In this book, he is twenty-one and striking out on his own for the very first time. Despite the best effort of both parents to keep him away from the world of crime, Ricky gets drawn into a local murder. Although Roderick is eventually sent to help his son out, Ricky remains at the center of the piece.

I actually did not mind Ricky as the central character. He has some interesting tensions and I could have seen him go on in later works to follow in his father's footsteps despite the wishes of his parents. That said, these tensions are not well developed in Last Ditch and Ricky remains betwixt and between with Roderick still shouldering most of the responsibility for the crime.

It would also have been interesting to see an aging Roderick less able to cope with the modern world of drugs and promiscuity. But Alleyn seems surprisingly unchanged, despite having a 21 year old son. He adjusts to the junkies and smuggling with ease.

Unfortunately, the world of drugs and junkies described here fails to ring true. It reads like second-hand stereotype rather than something from reality.

All this makes it sound like a bad book. It is not. Particularly for Marsh fans, there are still those moments of brilliance that characterize so much of her work. Julia Pharamond is a brilliant character, for instance. Her dizzy complexity and cold kindness makes her a classic Marsh character. I would not begin here if you haven't read any other Marsh, but if you are already a fan I would not be afraid to pick it up either.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A boring story that doesn't stand the test of time, November 12, 2011

By 

Slick "sck007" (Dover, NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Ditch (Hardcover)

I'm a big fan of cozy mysteries and I picked this novel up because I thought that it would be similar to Agatha Christie's work. I'm in my mid-40's now, but I can remember my mom reading Ngaio Marsh novels as a kid in the '70's. This is the 1st Marsh novel I've ever read and, based on what others have stated, perhaps it shouldn't have been. The characters are very simple and 2-dimensional. Inspector Alleyn and his wife Troy are like Ozzie & Harriet (Nelson). Their son, Ricky, is like...well Ricky Nelson. The characters are so predictable that there is never any mystery as to what they're up to (drug smuggling). I kept waiting for plot twists and turns that never came. In the end, the murderer revealed himself to the police out of guilt. As a reader I felt gypped that he wasn't found out due to clever sleuthing.