Dame Ngaio Marsh was an actress, playwright, and theatre producer, now best known for her mystery novels. The two murder mysteries I read feature Peregrine Jay, a theatre producer at London’s Dolphin Theatre.
Light Thickens, which I happened upon at a book sale, was Marsh’s last book, published posthumously. The murder in the book takes place during a production of Macbeth.
What distinguishes this book is the author’s intense admiration for Shakespeare and the theatre. As you read, you find out what it is like to choose a cast and direct a play. Marsh richly describes the product of the director’s infinite decisions: the staging, the costumes, the roles, the props, the moods, the sounds, the effects. You are treated to the spectacle of rehearsals, staff meetings, and offstage interactions involving the theatre company—a range of personalities from the actors to the props manager to the lighting guy to the child actor’s mother.
Marsh’s description of the play worked like an enthusiastic college professor’s recommendation of a book. Although it takes a long time for the murder to happen, you don’t care because you are enjoying so much the commentary on the unfolding action of the play:
Duncan arrives at the castle. The sound of wings fluttering in the evening air. Peaceful. Then the squeal of pipes, the rumble of the great doors, the opening and the assembly of servants. Seyton. Lady Macbeth a scarlet figure at the top of the stairs. Don’t go in, don’t go in.
I couldn’t help but reread Macbeth at the same time, and of course that was a magnificent experience.
The murder was dark, gruesome, and dramatic, but the mystery itself, the suspenseful hunt for the murderer and motive, was not that great. By the end of the book, though, I was content to have the murder simply be the excuse for such a fine book’s existence.
The book hinted at a previous crime at the Dolphin Theatre, so I proceeded to check out Killer Dolphin from the library. It was more lighthearted, and also highly enjoyable.
In the first couple of chapters, improbable events unfold in an absurd, comic, almost Wodehousian way. Later in the book, the interviewing of the suspects is suspenseful and intriguing, as facts intermittently come to light. Police Superintendent Alleyn has a bigger and more interesting role.
The parts I found the least enjoyable in both books were the petty intrigues among the leading actors. I never felt like I knew the characters well enough to care about their silly disputes. These books are possibly more interesting to theatre fans than to mystery fans, although I thought it was uniquely satisfying to encounter a combination of the two realms.
