A collection of the BBC’s dramatisations of Ngaio Marsh’s most famous sleuth: Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn.
A Man Lay Dead - The gentleman detective tackles a country house party murder.
Death in Ecstasy - In the House of the Sacred Flame, where truth and illusion are hopelessly entangled, Death catches up with one of the Initiates - and Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn investigates a murder.
A Surfeit of Lampreys - Gentleman sleuth Inspector Alleyn probes a grisly death of the head of a spendthrift aristocratic family.
Opening Night - When a leading actor is found gassed in his dressing room, it looks like suicide. But it transpires he was so detested that everyone had a motive for his murder.
When In Rome - 1970s Rome. Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn is incognito and on the trail of a vast drugs syndicate - and some exceptionally unsavoury blackmail. But he hasn't reckoned on murder.
Murder for Christmas – Jonathan Royal is a man rich enough to indulge his somewhat extravagant sense of the theatrical. But when he hits on the bizarre idea of throwing a weekend party with guests who have good reasons to loathe one another, his malicious comedy quickly turns to tragedy.
This collection will also include some exclusive bonus content interviews with Ngaio Marsh herself and an exploration into her most famous character.
Ngaio Marsh was a New Zealand author best known for her 32 Golden Age detective novels featuring Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn. She is widely regarded as one of the 'Queens of Crime', along with Agatha Christie, D. L. Sayers and Margery Allingham. In 1948, she received an OBE, and in 1966 she became a Dame of the British Empire for services to theatre and literature in New Zealand. She was awarded a Grand Master Award for lifetime achievement as a detective novelist from the Mystery Writers of America in 1978. Marsh died in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1982. Her last novel, Light Thickens, was published posthumously the same year.