I’m a big fan of classic British mysteries. I have read quite a few Agatha Christie novels and all of Dorothy Sayers’, but until now I had not read anything by Ngaio Marsh. I remember my Mom reading her books way back when, so I decided to start at the beginning and read her first mystery, A Man Lay Dead. I am so glad I did!

First, this book did not strike me as a tentative first effort by an inexperienced author, the way the John Bude’s The Cornish Coast Murder did. All of the characters are real and have multifaceted personalities. The murder itself is very difficult to figure out how it could have been carried out, let alone by whom. And, there is a fun side-trip into a weird conspiracy of Russian assassins!

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