Roderick Alleyn is back in this unique crime novel begun by Ngaio Marsh during the Second World War and now completed by Stella Duffy in a way that has delighted reviewers and critics alike.
Shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger Award 2018.
It’s business as usual for Mr Glossop as he does his regular round delivering wages to government buildings scattered across New Zealand’s lonely Canterbury plains. But when his car breaks down he is stranded for the night at the isolated Mount Seager Hospital, with the telephone lines down, a storm on its way and the nearby river about to burst its banks.
Trapped with him at Mount Seager are a group of quarantined soldiers with a serious case of cabin fever, three young employees embroiled in a tense love triangle, a dying elderly man, an elusive patient whose origins remain a mystery ... and a potential killer.
When the payroll disappears from a locked safe and the hospital’s death toll starts to rise faster than normal, can the appearance of an English detective working in counterespionage be just a lucky coincidence – or is something more sinister afoot?
'Stella Duffy performs a remarkable act of ventriloquism with New Zealand's Queen of Crime. I defy readers to see the join' VAL McDERMID
‘A proper Golden Age set up of suspects and plot, a wonderful sense of place and period, and a real frisson of being with Alleyn himself! I can’t imagine anyone doing it better – Stella Duffy is the natural successor to Dame Ngaio’ KATE MOSSE
‘Ngaio Marsh fans rejoice! After 35 years Alleyn is back in a new mystery – and both are as good as ever’ JOHN CURRAN
‘Marsh and Duffy have created A Midsummer Night’s Dream with corpses, clues and Kiwi accents. Ingenious indeed’ ANDREW TAYLOR, THE SPECTATOR
‘Fans all over the world will, I’m sure, hope that there are more stories to come.’ SOPHIE HANNAH, THE GUARDIAN
‘I absolutely love Ngaio Marsh! She's probably my favourite golden age doyenne’ A.J. FINN, author of The Woman in the Window
‘A more appropriate ‘completist’ author could hardly have been wished for’ MIKE RIPLEY, SHOTS Magazine
‘One of the most successful resurrections of another author’s character I’ve come across.’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Clever stuff. Ngaio Marsh would give it nine out of ten’ DAILY MAIL
‘Duffy captures Marsh’s style, dialogue and mood brilliantly’ THE TIMES
‘A complicated tale, so well completed by Stella Duffy that I was quite unable to see the join’ LITERARY REVIEW
“A taut atmospheric whodunit ... Duffy’s facility at injecting wit into fair-play detecting will make Marsh fans hope she’ll continue the series.” PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Though tart noir specialist Duffy might seem an unlikely choice to flesh out the skeleton Marsh left behind, fans will be hard-pressed to find the joint between the two writers.” KIRKUS REVIEW
“An extraordinary literary tag-team completed 75 years after it began.” THE LISTENER (NZ)
