Nursing Home Murder

by Ngaio Marsh

Book Overview

For one unlucky Member of Parliament, a simple visit to the hospital (the "nursing home" of the title) proves fatal. But as Inspector Alleyn will discover, any number of people had reason to help the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0515078514
• ISBN13: 9780515078510
• Release Date: September 1984
• Publisher: Jove Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 4.2" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

4.5 stars--Alleyn & Bathgate mystery

This is a nice little mystery which will keep you guessing--in parallel with Chief Inspector Alleyn--until almost the end. It includes several references to Marsh's two prior mysteries A Man Lay Dead & Enter a Murderer. There are tons of potential murderers & motives galore--even some Bolsheviks (as in a previous work)--with Alleyn's highly enjoyable repartee with his Boswell, journalist Nigel Bathgate & his fiancée Angela North. While it's a fairly short work, it's satisfying, quite good, but perhaps not Marsh's best--which is very good indeed. This novel has been anthologized in at least two Marsh collections: The Roderick Alleyn Mysteries: The Nursing Home Murder; Death in a White Tie; Final Curtain & BOX SET "Four of Her Finest": The Nursing Home Murder / Colour Scheme / Dead Water / Spinsters in Jeopardy. Best of all, it demonstrates Marsh's almost unequalled style & humorous observations. My favorites are: p. 11: so maddeningly remote. Their very embraces were masked in a chilly patina of good form. He supposed he had married her in a brief wave of enthusiasm for polar exploration. p. 112: [Journalist Bathgate]--"Do you read crime fiction?" [Chief Inspector Alleyn]--"I dote on it. It's such a relief to escape from one's work into an entirely different atmosphere." p. 159: It gave her an uncanny resemblance to something human. It's also interesting that Marsh quotes Shakespeare: p. 139: "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes" since Agatha Christie published a mystery entitled By The Pricking Of My Thumbs (Tommy and Tuppence) & Ray Bradbury published Something Wicked This Way Comes. [page #'s are from the 1963 copyright but probably the same as this one]

GREAT READ!!!

FROM A CLASSIC MYSTERY AUTHOR A WONDERFUL BOOK STUFFED WITH THREE GREAT MYSTERIES AND THE DASHING RODERICK ALLEYN