Night At The Vulcan (original 1951; edition 1994)

I like detectives. Not all of them by any means, but I like them. Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector Grant, and most recently, Inspector Alleyn. Any new-to-me Alleyn mystery is a cause for rejoicing, the donning of a smoking jacket and the putting up of an 'occupied' sign on my (non-existent) study door. Lord Peter is perhaps my favorite but Alleyn comes close.

I'm not sure how many Alleyns I've read so far; my wild guess is about ten. They have, at this point, started to get a bit formulaic, although the characters are always a delight. Night at the Vulcan was interesting partly because it varied the formula a bit and also because Alleyn managed to solve the mystery in a single night.

The story starts out with a young woman named Martyn Tarne who intended to audition for a small part in a play but arrives too late. She obviously has no money and is at the end of her rope. She manages to wing a job as the leading lady's dresser. They very quickly notice Martyn's strong resemblance to the leading man, Adam Poole. A complicated situation results. Of course there is a murder--someone no one likes or will miss very much. Alleyn arrives on the scene accompanied by Fox and Mike Lamprey, from A Surfeit of Lampreys. And of course the murderer is caught, although not quite in the usual way.

Night at the Vulcan is one of Marsh's more clever mysteries. The cast of characters is not as appealing as they often are, but the two main characters remain sympathetic. All in all, it was an enjoyable book and satisfying book. ( )

I like detectives. Not all of them by any means, but I like them. Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey, Inspector Grant, and most recently, Inspector Alleyn. Any new-to-me Alleyn mystery is a cause for rejoicing, the donning of a smoking jacket and the putting up of an 'occupied' sign on my (non-existent) study door. Lord Peter is perhaps my favorite but Alleyn comes close.

I'm not sure how many Alleyns I've read so far; my wild guess is about ten. They have, at this point, started to get a bit formulaic, although the characters are always a delight. Night at the Vulcan was interesting partly because it varied the formula a bit and also because Alleyn managed to solve the mystery in a single night.

The story starts out with a young woman named Martyn Tarne who intended to audition for a small part in a play but arrives too late. She obviously has no money and is at the end of her rope. She manages to wing a job as the leading lady's dresser. They very quickly notice Martyn's strong resemblance to the leading man, Adam Poole. A complicated situation results. Of course there is a murder--someone no one likes or will miss very much. Alleyn arrives on the scene accompanied by Fox and Mike Lamprey, from A Surfeit of Lampreys. And of course the murderer is caught, although not quite in the usual way.

Night at the Vulcan is one of Marsh's more clever mysteries. The cast of characters is not as appealing as they often are, but the two main characters remain sympathetic. All in all, it was an enjoyable book and satisfying book. ( )

Down-on-her-luck Martyn Tarne (yes, "Martyn" is a female name, which threw me off a bit until I figured it out) is applying for theatre work in England, having recently arrived from New Zealand. She's down to two shillings and a few-odd pence and is seriously considering sleeping in a homeless shelter for the night. However, luck is upon her when she arrives at the Vulcan Theatre: the dresser for the noted Helena Hamilton has been taken ill, so Martyn steps into the breach. But the theatre has a bit of a gloomy past: five years previously, someone was killed by the gas fire in the dressing room. The actors, being a superstitious lot, don't talk much about it. Imagine then how much it rattles them when one of their number appears to have committed suicide in much the same manner as the previous death. Or is it really suicide...?

This is a slow-burn book with a slightly rushed ending. The slow burn is at least diverting: Marsh, being a playwright, knows all about actors' foibles and quirks and is adept at describing the atmosphere of a theatre in different stages of a production. Anyone who has worked in theatre will recognize themselves at some point in the story (for me, I definitely remembered the nervous thrill of opening night and how it all feels slightly unreal). Once the death occurs, Alleyn and the troops come in and simply talk their way to a solution, which seemed a bit anticlimactic. So if you're planning to read this I would say the characters are a bigger draw than the actual plot. ( )

Martyn Tarne, a young actress from New Zealand, arrives in England with no money and no immediate job prospects. After a fortnight of fruitless job-hunting, she arrives late for the auditions at the Vulcan Theatre - but not too late to overhear the leading lady's dresser is ill. It is not the sort of theatre work Martyn wants, but she's exhausted and desperate - and so, despite her lack of appropriate references, she applies.
The opening night of a new play is just days away, and relationships between some members of the cast and crew are strained. As an unlikely dresser, Martyn attracts a certain amount of attention, not all of it welcome.

This is a murder mystery, although considerable time passes before the murder occurs and Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn arrives on the scene. It is not one of Marsh's better mysteries: the revelation lacks dramatic surprise and the denouncement has never struck me as being clever. The investigation is brief, and does not really even provide insight into 1950s police-methods - at one point, Alleyn turns to a young constable and says "[What I just did] was an almost flawless example of how an investigating officer is not meant to behave. You will be good enough to forget it."
And unlike some mysteries, where the romantic subplot can be half the reason for reading the book, Opening Night's romance is neither entertaining nor intelligent; in fact, I wish it was absent from the story entirely.

Nevertheless, Opening Night is one of the Ngaio Marsh mysteries I like to reread in its entirety. It mightn't be a great mystery, but it's a very interesting portrayal of a theatre approaching opening night. Marsh does a wonderful job of conveying the physical space of the theatre, the different jobs and people involved in a show, and the potential tensions between them - as well as the intentions of the play itself.
I like Martyn. I like the way her wishful thinking is challenged - she discovers it's one thing to daydream about getting a role on short notice, and another to hope for the misfortune of someone she knows so that she herself may have a chance. I love how Marsh captures Martyn's exhaustion throughout the novel - there's something remarkably evocative about it, and it makes Martyn easy to sympathise with.

It's disappointing that in Opening Night Marsh was unable to write a good mystery about the theatre, but that does not mean the novel is without any redeeming qualities. ( )

Opening Night written by Ngaio Marsh was published in 1951. Its name in the United states was Night at the Vulcan. It is the sixteenth book in Marsh’s Inspector Roderick Alleyn series.

A new play opens at the Vulcan, formerly known as the Jupiter, and by the looks of it, it is going to be a success. But before the night is over one of the leading members of the cast lies dead backstage. It looks like suicide but the memories of a past murder echoes throughout the theatre. Inspector Alleyn comes to the scene to discover all.

Opening Night constantly makes references to an Inspector Alleyn short story called I Can Find My Way Out (1946). Opening Night is in a way a sequel to that story. The two not only share the same location and setting but the murder is also inspired by the previous case. I read The Collected Short Fiction Of Ngaio Marsh earlier this year and I Can Find My Way Out was a part of it. I picked up Opening Night without knowing the connection between the two stories and was very pleasantly surprised by the coincidence.

This is a reasonably short book. I managed to finish it very quickly.

The central mystery is good. The narrative goes on without a lot of dilly dallying. I enjoyed the crispness of it.

The book begins with lot of promise. It starts off wonderfully with Martyn Tarne coming to the Vulcan Theatre, exhausted and at her wits end. But the narrative sort of hurries to the finish line.

Martyn Tarne’s character starts out well enough. But the promise shown in the early pages fails to materialize. Her past, her desire to be an actress, it all shows the markings of a much deeper character. But she turns out to be a mere wilting wall flower type of a character. Always apologetic and sort of vacuous.

The dialogue at times gets irritating. Like in the scene between Martyn Tarne and Gay Gainsford the dialogue goes round and round and round. ‘Don’t do this to me!’ ‘I’m not doing anything to you!’ ‘You can’t do this to me!’ ‘I’m not doing that to you!’ So tedious!

The romance in the book left me feeling annoyed. All the middle aged men in the book seem to crave for younger women. The romance between two middle aged characters finally comes to an end because guess what a young virginal girl has just showed up and in just three days the man is sure he wants to marry her.

There are some ‘un-cosy’ like elements in the book such as sexual harassment, rape; etc. The rape of course is not graphic and is implied rather than shown or discussed but it is there.

Overall, Opening Night is a pretty okay mystery. But I will not be re-reading this in the future.