Enter a Murderer was not quite the debut of Roderick Alleyn, Ngaio Marsh's detective hero, but the second book that she wrote. It wasn't too bad, though it is rather apparent that it is an early effort. She later took much more time over her novels, but this followed hard on the heels of her first novel the previous year and was the second of what became eleven books in seven years. She had not yet made much effort to distinguish her hero from the hero of Dorothy Sayers' novels, Lord Peter Wimsey. However much the author may have protested that, though inspired by Sayers, she did not pattern her detective after him, I find her difficult to credit. It may not mean much to anyone unfamiliar with Sayers, but I will quote two passages from Marsh's novel and leave you to decide for yourself if you wish.

Not a bit. I'm as simple as I am clever--a lovable trait in my character. An actor in his dressing-room will thrill me to mincemeat. I shall sit and goggle at him, I promise you.
....
"What's the matter with you?"
"I don't know. Got the ooble-boobles. Let's have a drink."

The mystery itself was decent, though not inspired, but, as I noted above, it is apparent that it is not a mature work. I particularly dislike an author to call something "indescribable" and then proceed to spend a lengthy paragraph contradicting themselves. This is not, however, a fatal flaw. One of the greatest novels of all time, The Count of Monte Cristo, has this particular quirk all through it, and it still is what I would consider one of the five greatest books I've ever read. ( )

I've been curious about Ngaio (pronounced "nigh-oh") Marsh's mysteries for some time. I had purchased some of Marsh's books secondhand because of a friend's recommendation, but seeing a few others at the thrift store recently gave me that little push to finally read one. Enter a Murderer is the one I picked, quite at random, and I have to say it was pretty good.

Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn is invited by his journalist friend Nigel Bathgate to a highly rated play. In the play, one of the characters shoots another as part of the story. Only this time, the gun was really loaded, and a man really died. Alleyn is immediately on-duty trying to figure out who, of all the people behind the scenes during the four-minute set change, would change the blanks in the gun to real bullets. Several people have possible motives, and the story is doubly interesting because unlike most suspects in a mystery novel, all these characters are already actors and know how to play a careful part.

In this story, Roderick Alleyn is nothing extraordinary as a detective character. He doesn't have Poirot's lovable cuteness or Lord Peter's debonair charm, but he is intelligent enough to sift to the bottom of the mystery — and doesn't always play by the rules along the way. I don't know what character development he has already had in previous books. He's fairly likeable, and I've certainly never heard a literary detective admit he has a rotten memory. I should like to know a little more about him before I consign him to the ranks of so-so characters.

I don't think Marsh quite reaches Christie's level, but the mystery was quite presentable and the characters interesting. I wouldn't recommend her books to younger readers, though. There's definitely a sexual undertone in this one, perhaps because of the plot of the play and the way the actors' real lives mirror it. I'll probably read more of Marsh's mysteries, and overall I'd recommend it for fans of Sayers, Christie, and Tey. ( )

This is one of Marsh’s famous “theater” mysteries and a very good one that I had never read. This book was published before Artists in Crime because in this one the journalist Nigel Bathgate refers to “Angela North”—the woman to whom he is married in Artists but not yet in this book. (I looked up the copyright dates and this one is actually published 3 years before Artists in Crime.) These two books have similar plot twists in which the murder is accomplished by means of a trap set so that the actual death occurs in front of many people—this one on stage when the victim is shot during a play because someone had substituted real bullets for the blanks and in Artists a trap is set so that the model dies when she is place in her pose which has a knife jammed into the frame of the platform where she poses. ( )

Ugh! I've read about 6 other books in this series and enjoyed them all. This was a big disappointment. Incredibly boring and long-winded. I really look forward to the characterization in these books but this time they were very poorly described and everyone seemed to be the same character. It was very difficult to differentiate one from the other. Needless to say I gave up caring whodunit, and thirty pages from the end I started skimming to get it over with. I really like Marsh but I recommend skipping this one. ( )