Book description
The Empress of Crime's life was the ultimate detective story - revealed
for the first time in this forthright and perceptive biography.
While Ngaio Marsh had a flamboyant public persona, she was fiercely
protective of her private life. And no one knows better how to cover
tracks with red herrings and remove incriminating evidence than a crime
fiction writer…
This fascinating biography of Ngaio Marsh pieces together both the
public and private Marsh in a way that is as riveting as a crime novel.
Through her writing and her theatre work, Joanne Drayton assembles the
pieces to the puzzle that is Marsh, proving that life can be as
thrilling as fiction. Marsh wrote her first detective novel in a London
flat in the depths of the 1930s Depression, bringing life to Detective
Inspector Roderick Alleyn in her first book, A Man Lay Dead. Through 32
novels he would establish himself as one of the great super-sleuths, and
Marsh as one of the four Queens of Golden Age detective fiction,
alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham.
In 1932, a family tragedy brought Marsh home to New Zealand, to a life
divided - between hemispheres, between passionate relationships at home
and abroad, and between the world of publishing and her life as a stage
director. In 1949 her writing would earn her the ultimate distinction
when Penguin and Collins released the 'Marsh Million': 100,000 copies
each of ten of her titles on to the world market. The popular appetite
for classic whodunits was insatiable and Ngaio Marsh was one of the
best. But her greatest love was the stage - or was it?
