Jeremy Clyde as usual is well cast as an aristocrat (he played Alleyn again in a radio production of A Surfeit of Lampreys for the same production team), while the late Donald Sinden is unmistakable as blustery Sir Hubert, the host of the party and art collector who covets the dagger used as the murder weapon. In reducing the novel to an hour-long drama, this production does a nice job of speeding things up by starting with the discovery of the body next to the dinner gong during the ‘murder’ game and then flashes back to fill in the blanks. So really not much cop then – much better instead to concentrate on the adaptations of the book, which made lots of interesting changes!Ī Man Lay Dead – BBC Radio Four (broadcast: 6 January 2001) – 60 minutesĭramatised by Michael Bakewell Directed by Enyd WilliamĬast: Jeremy Clyde (Alleyn), Donald Sinden (Sir Hubert), Derek Waring (Charles), John Moffatt (Arthur), Dorothy Tutin (Marjorie), Nick Waring (Nigel), Stephen Thorne (Sergeant Bunce), Molly Gaisford (Angela), Susannah Corbett (Rosamund), John Hartley (Dr Tokareff) And the conclusion in particular is rather weak as Alleyn manages to explain how the crime might have been committed but in fact can’t actually prove it – but despite this, he gets an unlikely confession just the same.

On the other hand, it can all be a bit tiresome if, like me, you have read perhaps too many such examples of the genre and get frustrated by the feeling that the author just isn’t trying very hard to vary an already very well-established formula. In and of itself this can be fun, if you are not in too exacting a frame of mind. Throw in an exotic dagger, plenty of suspects, a completely implausible alibi and an absurd murder method (involving sliding down the bannister of the country house in pitch darkness) and what you have is a fairly typical product of its day (as is the xenophobic Commie bashing, though that has hardly abated of late). He had heard much of Sir Hubert Handesley’s ‘unique and delightfully original house parties’ …Īs seems so often the case with Marsh, the characters are quite good fun but once the investigation into the stabbing of writer and ladies’ man Charles Rankin begins, it all starts to get very dull and mechanical indeed. I submit this review for Bev’s 2015 Vintage Mystery Challenge and Tuesday’s Overlooked Film / TV meme hosted by Todd Mason at his Sweet Freedom blog. It was later adapted by the BBC for radio and TV too, which suggests it has a lot of appeal, right? Well … here’s the premise: at a weekend gathering at Frantock, an English country house, a game of ‘Murder’ goes wrong and Alleyn is called in …

Having rather hated one of the later cases featuring Roderick Alleyn, the upper-class cop invented by Ngaio Marsh ( click here for my splenetic review of False Scent), I thought I would dial back the clock and see how he fared in his first investigation.

Ngaio marsh agatha troy