People/Characters Roderick Alleyn

Roderick Alleyn (pronounced "Allen") is a fictional character who first appeared in 1934. He is the policeman hero of the 32 detective novels of Ngaio Marsh. Marsh and her gentleman detective belong firmly in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, although the last Alleyn novel, Light Thickens, was published in 1982.

Marsh mentions in an introduction that she named her detective Alleyn after the Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, founder of Dulwich College, where her father had been a pupil. Marsh's Alleyn novels form a chronological series that follows his detective career. When the series opens (A Man Lay Dead, 1934), Alleyn is aged about 40 and is already a Detective Chief-Inspector in the CID at Scotland Yard.
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