Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... Un hombre muerto (1934)por Ngaio Marsh
Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. At Sir Hubert Handesley's country house party, five guests have gathered for the uproarious parlor game of "Murder." Yet no one is laughing when the lights come up on an actual corpse, the good-looking and mysterious Charles Rankin. Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn arrives to find a complete collection of alibis, a missing butler, and an intricate puzzle of betrayal and sedition in the search for the key player in this deadly game Cant believe I've read so many Alleyn books, but have taken this long to get to read #1. This book starts with Nigel Bathgate, junior reporter and ongoing stalwart of the series, being invited to a country house weekend with his cousin. There he meets Angela, and a number of other characters, and during a game of "murders" finds his cousin murdered with a knife in his back. Alleyn arrives to investigate, still young and an Inspector (somehow morphing into the better known CHIEF inspector near the end of the book. The other usual cast - such as Fox - dont make it into this first novel. There is a little diversion (Maguffin) over the Russian community in London, which allows for the dagger to be used in the murder. Alleyn is a little moodier than in later novels, still being young and possibly not fleshed out as in later novels. Not sure I would have continued with the series had I come across this book first. A quick read, a fairly standard English Country House mystery. Ngaio Marsh's writing has some verve to it, and the characters of Nigel and Angela were some fun as Bright Young Things who assist Inspector Alleyne in figuring out whodunnit. But even allowing for the fact that what is cliché now was fresh once, A Man Lay Dead is a deeply silly book. The howdunnit just didn't work, and Alleyne's procedural methods had me scratching my head and wondering if any part of his case would stand up in court. I know that the Thirties were a different time—but that different? Then you add in a lot of classism and the xenophobic subplot that went nowhere involving the A Man Lay Dead by Ngaio Marsh #books #reviews #mystery My Rating : 3/5 This is my first book by Ngaio Marsh and I am not over the top excited to pick her next one. I have read multiple great works of Agatha Christie and though they are often compared for who is a better writer, for me, so far, Miss Christie wins hands down. About this book, thought the plot is getting well laid out and the narrative is getting constructed rather well but then the element of Russian mafia is introduced which not only derailed the whole plot but was utterly irrelevant to the mystery at hand. It was a ploy to add to the number of pages by the author or so I have come to feel having finished the book. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Pertenece a las seriesRoderick Alleyn (1) Pertenece a las series editorialesFontana (389) Mirabilia (81) Mirabilia (81) Prisma detectives (73) Contenido enTiene la adaptaciónListas de sobresalientes
Ngaio Marsh fue junto a Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers y Margery Allingham una de las cuatro reinas de la era dorada de la novela de misterio en lengua inglesa. Y, como no podía ser de otra manera, su primera obra transcurre durante un fin de semana en una casa de campo durante el periodo de entreguerras. Allí, en mitad del ajetreo de los criados, de los caballeros de esmoquin y de las hermosas damas vestidas de seda, el anfitrión, sir Hubert Handesley, ha ideado una divertida variante del popular pasatiempo de salón conocido como el Juego del Asesino. Sin embargo, nadie se ríe cuando apenas iniciados los preparativos se encuentran con el cadáver de uno de los participantes... Una colección de coartadas, un mayordomo desaparecido y un intricado rompecabezas de traiciones aguardan en la escena del crimen al inspector Roderick Alleyn, enviado por Scotland Yard para desenmascarar al principal intérprete del mortal divertimento. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNingunoCubiertas populares
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)823Literature English & Old English literatures English fictionClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
Overall the writing is serviceable and I read through like yeah sure whatever this is fine so maybe 2 stars but I'm rating 1 cause mystery novels hang together on a convincing conclusion and I didn't see it at all. Nothing else about it is interesting enough for me to care - no funny dialogue, no stand out characters. So yeah.
Oh also it uses the n word once. And what universe is it that someone can *remove another person's trousers* in the middle of a normal social get together and everyone just acts totally casual about it?
Some of the inconsistencies
With the murder, the murderer is specifically allotted *exactly 8 seconds* to get from the bathroom to downstairs, do the murder and turn the lights off. His method relies on the victim being in *exactly* the right place to get stabbed (he could never have turned around, he couldn't have moved away from the stairs). In those 8 seconds, after apparently sliding down a banister, he got the knife in EXACTLY the right spot between bones that was considered so impressive that the murderer needed to know anatomy well. His alibi was 2 people thinking he was in the bath but as well as those 8 seconds he also got out the bath to get a glove from his wife's dressing room. That would take some time. Surely someone would have noticed the splashing had stopped? Bath noises are actually pretty distinctive - you can usually tell when someone's getting out. And there's door noises, footsteps too. In fact, the servant who comes into give Nigel shaving water would surely have seen him on the landing? The timescale is even less than the 8 seconds allotted and it seems extremely unlikely. He'd also have dripped water EVERYWHERE! I can't believe nobody noticed. (Realised iirc he actually wasn't in the bath. He was just pretending to me. Even then splashing about would get you wet and you'd drip. And the noises are noticeably different when you're not in with your whole body. Ah well) The attempts in the scene before the murder to make it work just... don't. He also decided to do this plan even though he only had a single glove - he tried to avoid leaving prints but completely failed. Surely his wife would have thought "oh I'm sure I put those gloves in the drawer" too and realised something was up - but she doesn't; Alleyn actually misleads here by claiming he found one in the hall so the wife doesn't question it.
When Alleyn does a totally pointless "reconstruction" (he asks Nigel to play the murderer and then goes off at him when he shows a slight hesitancy... before asking the person he knows to be the murderer to do it... and him doing it was essential to his terrible plan... so why attack Nigel??)
the murderer is in no way revealed except for Alleyn accusing him and him saying "damn you".
Which he didn't need to do and would hardly hold up in court.
Also the motive of "oh he was mad at the victim for flirting with his wife" seems kind of weird given he never even attempted to stop it in any way at all and apparently let it go on for years and years. The victim seems like an utter prick by the way. Can't pretend I felt any sympathy towards him.
There's probably more but just. blurgh. Bad. Maybe also I'm stupid! I don't know