I pick up Ngaio Marsh’s books when I want an old fashioned mystery that isn’t an Agatha Christie (though no one beats Christie in this genre, period). However, they keep letting me down, though they are certainly inoffensive for the most part. The last two Marsh books I reviewed were rather dull. Marsh’s Death in Ecstasy was better, although still not Christie caliber.
Nigel Bathgate, journalist and similarly dim Hastings to Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn’s Poirot, finds himself at a mysterious religious service at a place called the House of the Sacred Flame. The magnetic Father Garnette leads a ritual where a group of initiates gather around the altar and pass a glass of wine around until it reaches the specially chosen Cara Quayne. As Quayne drinks from the cup, she suddenly spasms and drops down dead. She’s been poisoned! And as always there is a group of suspects.
Besides Father Garnette, there are the initiates: the elderly Miss Wade; bombastic American Sam Ogden; suave Frenchman M. de Ravigne who was in love with Cara; Mrs. Candour, who like Cara is enamoured of Father Garnette; Janey Jenkins, the standard sturdy English girl; and Janey’s high-strung beau Maurice Pringle.
Nigel calls in Inspector Alleyn, who with his team questions the suspects one by one. In every book I’ve read, Marsh always mechanically marches through the suspect questioning. That can get kind of dull, but it’s a little livelier here and less repetitious as in previous books.
As the mystery unfolds, it features cult ceremonies, spicy affairs, a heroin ring, surreptitious porn, surprise imposters, and some convoluted clues I still hadn’t quite worked out by the end of the book.
There is one aspect of the book that is baffling: its extreme homophobia. Father Garnette has two acolytes, Lionel and Claude, who are clearly gay and always described with hostility. They are called hot house flowers, queens, sissies, unspeakable, bloody little pansies, flouncing and “rather awful.” All characters find them repulsive. Do these aspersions lend anything to the plot? No. The only purpose they serve is to make clear that Marsh was disgusted by gay people. It was really weird.
The ending was kind of anti-climactic and not really a surprise or interesting. Even so, it was an easy read and mildly diverting.
