Final Curtain

Description

A country house murder, artistic insight and the post-war reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh's wittiest and most readable novel. Agatha Troy, world famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies. The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in -- in the person of Troy's long-absent husband, Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn...

Dame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895 and died in February 1982. She wrote over 30 detective novels and many of her stories have theatrical settings, for Ngaio Marsh's real passion was the theatre. She was both actress and producer and almost single-handedly revived the New Zealand public's interest in the theatre. It was for this work that the received what she called her 'damery' in 1966.

'...purty ngai perfect.' Saturday Review of Literature 'She uses the old formula brilliantly.' Julian Symons 'A better novel than a detective story.' Toronto Globe and Mail 'The finest writer in the English language of the pure, classical puzzle whodunit. Among the crime queens, Ngaio Marsh stands out as an Empress.' The Sun