A Christmas pageant turns unholy when a player disappears into the snowy night. Troy Alleyn is in the thick of it and why Inspector Roderick Alleyn joins her at Bill-Tasman’s estate where he’s dragooned into finding the lost man — and unraveling the glaring truth from the glittering tinsel.
It’s a tangled set of relationships with family, trustees, theft, and a genealogical obsession until an irritating country gent is murdered amid all the friction in an English country house shared by genteel retiree Percival Pyke Period and fuddy-duddy lawyer Harry Cartell. After a flamboyant dowager’s treasure hunt party, Superintendent Roderick Alleyn’s suspects are the tangle amidst the half-truths and too many motives.
It’s five days out of time on a riverboat, exactly what Troy Alleyn needs until she meets the passengers and one of them disappears.
I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.False Scentby Ngaio Marsh detective mystery, forensic mystery, vintage mystery in a Kindle edition that was published by Felony & Mayhem Press on February 15, 2015 and has 255 pages.Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Dead Water, Killer Dolphin, A Man Lay Dead, Enter a Murderer, The Nursing Home Murder, Death in Ecstasy, Vintage Murder, Artists in Crime, Death in a White Tie, Overture to Death, Death at the Bar, Surfeit of Lampreys, Death and the Dancing Footman, Died in the Wool, Swing, Brother, Swing, Night at the Vulcan, Colour Scheme, Spinsters in Jeopardy, Scales of Justice, The Death of a Fool, Singing in the Shroud, Clutch of Constables, Hand in Glove, When in Rome, Tied Up In TinselTwenty-first in the Inspector Roderick Alleyn vintage mystery series and revolving around a Scotland Yard detective in the late 1950s. My Take Well, it does tell you how great Miss Bellamy’s ego is when it starts off with her fantasy about who’s attending her funeral! […]
All aboard for murder, as the Cape Farewell steams out to sea, carrying a serial strangler who says it with flowers and a little song. It’s be up to Inspector Roderick Alleyn to deal with a collection of neurotic, bombastic, shifty, and passionate passengers at one another’s throats.
This year’s Mardian Mawris dance includes several sacrifices, and the suspects are numerous. Detective-Inspector Alleyn dances about with various villagers, a close-knit family, and a nutty dowager.
A charming English village and a cast of aristocrats reveal the darkness of betrayal with the help of a trout and a fish-eating cat to Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn.
For Inspector Roderick Alleyn, the trip was to be official; for his family, a Mediterranean romp. But a plot torn from the pages of a gothic novel soon engulfed them all. Alleyn’s son was kidnapped. A very wealthy spinster was murdered. And in an eerie chateau, carved out of the Riviera mountainside, Alleyn faced the ultimate jet-set cult.
Even down in New Zealand, war-fueled spy fever is running wild when strange lights and signals being sent out to sea are sighted. There must be a spy in their midst! More mystery arises when one of the health-seekers meets his demise in the mud baths.
There’s never a dull moment at the Vulcan, from the leading lady’s liaison to the harassment of an inadequate actress. But vanity and hysterics, suspicion and superstition, brandy and jealousy, are upstaged by a death on opening night.