Death of a Peer

Summary: A New Zealander’s visit to a happy-go-lucky English family is interrupted by the gruesome murder of Lord Charles’ brother in the elevator serving their flat, making the family prime suspects for Scotland Yard detective Roderick Alleyn

Ngaio Marsh, along with Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie, and Margerie Allingham, was one of the crime queens of the golden age of British crime fiction. She wrote a total of 32 Roderick Alleyn mysteries. This one is a special treat, both because of the unusual family, and connected characters, most of whom are possible suspects in a murder.

Death of a Peer is narrated largely through the eyes of a young girl from New Zealand, Roberta “Robin” Grey, who met the family, the Lampreys, while they show more tried their hands at becoming New Zealand landowners. Even then, what stands out is that this fun-loving family never really seems to apply itself to anything, is always in financial straits, and never takes this too seriously. After they returned to London, Robin is invited to stay with an aunt, but due to the aunt’s health, first stays with the Lampreys. Oh, what fun–especially with the eldest son Henry, to whom she is drawn.

Maybe not so much. Once again the Lampreys are up to their ears in debt and being hounded by debt collectors. Lord Charles, the head of the family hopes to get a bailout from his older brother, Gabriel, Marquis of Wutherwood and Rune. Uncle Gabriel and his wife, Aunt V. agree to a visit. Aunt V. is a witch and an eccentric, mentally unstable character. While Aunt V. visits with the women, the children listen in the next room as Uncle G. refuses the loan and the two brothers exchange harsh words. He leaves, sits down in the lift awaiting his wife, calls out to her twice, then they depart, helped by one of the twins.

Robin hears all this and then a loud shrieking as the lift comes back to the third floor. The doors open, Aunt V staggers out, beside herself, and the family sees a slumped over Uncle G., dying of fatal and gruesome wound from a skewer, earlier used in a skit put on by the children.

Enter Roderick Alleyn, whose challenge is made more difficult by this family who presents a united front. The identical twins, Colin and Stephen will not reveal which of them went to the elevator. Lord Charles stands to inherit, but the whole family has an interest. None of them, including the charming Henry holds down a job. Most helpful to Alleyn are the young child Michael and Robin, in her memory of the movements of various people, including Baskett, the butler, Giggles, the chauffer, and Tinkerton, Aunt V.’s attendant. This is despite her lie about the outcome of the meeting between Lord Charles and Gabriel.

This has it all, including an edge-of-the-seat ending, intricate plot, fascinating unusual characters, and the modest Alleyn who patiently works to connect all the dots. These books have been out of print (my copy was an old paperback literally falling apart) but have recently come on the market as e-books. Each of the “crime queens” have their own style. If you like this period, be sure to try out Ngaio Marsh. This one is a good place to start. show less

Marsh is probably the one of the 1930s "queens of English crime" that I've read least of. Her work doesn't have the inescapable ubiquity of Agatha Christie, and it doesn't seem to have any characteristics that particularly grab me in the way that a Dorothy L. Sayers novel would. This book, her tenth, attracted me a bit more than the two or three others I've read, but I still found the whole experience a bit bland.

It's a good old-fashioned English detective mystery, with everything you could want in term of butlers, peers, housemaids, a running joke about Shakespeare, an unconventional murder weapon, and a plot that requires you to study a plan of the building to make sense of who was where at the time of the crime. A marquess is found show more dead in the lift after visiting his Micawberesque younger brother, Lord Charles Lamprey, and Chief Inspector Alleyn is called in to investigate. Although published in wartime, it's set - and was presumably written - in the lonodn of '38 or '39, when war was still something looming on the horizon. The plot hangs together as well as these things ever do, the Lampreys and their many children are entertaining, in a disarming-upper-class-charm kind of way, and there is a certain autobiographical conviction to the passages where the point of view shifts to the young New Zealander Roberta Grey, but there are also some rather poorly-written scenes with lower-class characters. And Alleyn never quite becomes human enough to be an interesting detective. Pleasant, but nothing special. show less

A classic who-done-it from Ngaio Marsh starring Detective Inspector Alleyn. Slightly exaggerated characterisation doesn't detract from this murder mystery, starring the aristoctratic, feckless and charming Lamprey family. Interestingly much of the action is seen through the eyes of newly arrived New Zealander Roberta Grey, which may parallel the author's own experiences as an expatriate in London in the 1930's. Very enjoyable.
Additional comments after a re-read in 2019: Following on from my re-read of "Death in a White Tie" I moved on to "Surfeit of Lampreys". I've just finished reading biographies of two of the Mitford sisters (Debra and Diana) and looking through that lens I realise that the Lampreys are more true-to-life than you may show more think. The charm, in-jokes, numerous children, and frequent financial crises (throughout which a lifestyle of servants and socialising is maintained) are not a million miles from the real life Mitfords (and although the Mitfords managed to avoid murder they had more than their fair share of tragedy and scandal from which Marsh spares the Lampreys). show less

Another Inspector Alleyn treat to devour. I truly love Marsh's detective series, and this book was one of the up ones (I think all long series have their up and down books), in large part due to the zany Lampreys. Why did they change the title? The Lampreys deserve to be headlining this novel, as they steal the scene from Alleyn numerous times, which is hard to do. They are silly but endearing, and their verbal interchanges are lively. They are both characters in themselves and also a composite character as a family unit. Robin plays the straight man to their wackiness, and I was pleased with her romantic outcome. As for the actual story? The murder was your typical cozy mystery, a bit on the gruesome side, the clues were dealt, Alleyn show more was marvelous, the red herrings abounded, and the solution made sense. Nothing to take away, and everything to gain from meeting the Lampreys. I highly recommend this installment in Marsh's classic mystery series. show less

I know the saying is "don't judge a book by its cover", but the cover can indicate how low you should keep your expectations of a given book. In this case, we had:

- a spelling error in an endorsement: "Goulish enough to set the blood tingling, the scalp itching with apprehension..." Spelling errors are never a good sign.
- a quote on the back cover featuring an event that does not match the event depicted on the front cover. This is the case with my edition (Fontana / Collins, Sixth Impression 1971). It confused the heck out of me until I read the quote more closely (and arrived at that point in the book).
- the event quoted on the back cover taking place only in the last third of the story. That indicates how slowly the story moves for show more the first two-thirds.

But we're not here to complain about the cover. On to the story.

The titular Lampreys like to live large -- there are several children in the brood, and the family lives beyond their means. The patriarch, Charlie, seems to have a talent for investing in promising-sounding ventures that fall apart dramatically, leaving him scraping for pennies and wheedling money out of his much wealthier elder brother, Gabriel. Needless to say suspicions run quite high when Gabriel, aka Lord Wutherwood, is found in the Lamprey building's lift with a skewer through his eye, eventually dying of his injuries. But the question is, which of the many Lampreys did it? Or did any of them actually commit the crime? They all seem such nice folk, it's hard to believe...But Inspector Alleyn will find out the truth and bring the killer to justice.

This is an okay story, but it takes a long time to set up. The first few chapters establish the family's situation and introduces the family friend, Roberta "Robin" Grey, whom they met while living in -- take a wild guess if you are a regular Marsh reader -- NEW ZEALAND!!! Now, I love that country; it's very beautiful and the people there have wonderful accents, but does EVERY Marsh story HAVE to relate to it at least marginally? It seems rather forced to me. "Obligatory New Zealand reference? Check." But it certainly did not need three chapters or however long it took to establish the Lamprey family's character and their relationship with Robin. One chapter would have probably sufficed. I'm rather impatient that way with exposition sometimes.

Still, this book does have black magic, goofy upper-class British people, and witty detectives going for it, so you could do worse than this book. However, I would not recommend it as a starter if you're just getting into Marsh. show less

Better than the book published just previously (Death at the Bar) Surfeit is an example of a rather common technique amongst the "you need a chart and a map to understand the crime" mystery writers. Marsh disguises the obviousness of the identity of the murder by not giving us crucial information until late in the book and by distracting the reader with the "charm" and "eccentricity" of the the aristocratic family in which the crime takes place. Read more than a 1/2 century later the obvious double-standard of finding charming among the upper class what would have been considered unacceptable among the lower class is hard to miss. The easy conceit of earlier books is missing and the reappearance, for no good reason, of the reporter show more Bathgate, feels more than a little forced. show less

This book contains at its heart one of Marsh's best creations, the Lamprey family. Dotty, eccentric, lovable, they form the center of a locked room mystery--and distract the reader from the horror of the crime itself. They nearly distract the detectives as well, but as Marsh's Inspector Alleyn can always be relied upon to re-center himself, the distraction does not prove fatal and all of the clues are neatly laid out in the narrative itself. One of the characters even appears in a later book (Night at the Vulcan) and the quiet romance is dealt with deftly. Very well-plotted, very British, very enjoyable.