Singing In The Shrouds Ngaio Marsh

The police found the third corpse on a wharf in the Pool of London, her body covered with flower petals and pearls. Within the hour the killer was safe at sea - and among his fellow-passengers were four potential victims.

It’s foul play on a freighter: “Enthralling . . .keeps the reader on tenterhooks until the dramatic finale.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) The good ship Cape Farewell is steaming out to sea, with a passenger-list and crew fairly littered with the shifty, the twitchy, the peculiar, and the up-to-no-good. Arguably the up-to-no-goodest is a strangler with a romantic streak: He likes to leave his ladies with a flower and a charming little song. The latest of the ladies is currently lying on a fogbound London dock, mute witness to the fact that Inspector Alleyn—long on the strangler’s trail—has so far failed to catch his man. A wintertime sailing on a low-rent cargo ship is not Alleyn’s idea of a terrific time, but he nevertheless boards the Cape at Portsmouth, determined that no one else is going to get strangled on his watch . . .. “This is the Classic Puzzle at its purest . . .embellished by literate dialogue and attractive characterization.” —The New York Times

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime’s first book, the seventh volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries

The inspector digs into a cold case on a New Zealand sheep farm in this “well-sustained crime story” from the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master (Kirkus Reviews). Flossie Rubrick, a highly opinionated and influential member of the New Zealand Parliament, was last seen heading off to one of the storage sheds on her sheep farm. Three weeks later, she turned up dead and packed in a bale of her own wool. What happened on the night of her long-ago disappearance? In the country on counterespionage duty, Inspector Roderick Alleyn is happy to lend a hand. “The doyenne of traditional mystery writers.” —The New York Times

With this novel of mounting tension among apparently normal people, Ngaio Marsh achieved a triumph on a level with her most famous detective novels Surfeit of Lampreys, Scales of Justice and Off With His Head.

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One of Ngaio Marsh’s most popular novels, this time featuring one of her best creations – Lucy Lockett, the crime-solving cat.