Money in the Morgue
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?
Dame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895. Along with Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers she was admired as one of the original ‘Queens of Crime’, best known for her 32 crime novels featuring Detective Roderick Alleyn, published between 1934 and 1982, the year she died. In 1949 she had one million copies published on a single day (the 'Marsh Million'), a distinction she shared only with George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Agatha Christie. Many of her stories have theatrical settings, reflecting Ngaio Marsh’s real passion, and as both actress and producer she 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.
Stella Duffy is an acclaimed novelist and theatremaker who has twice won a prestigious CWA Dagger for her short stories, she won Stonewall Writer of the Year twice and the inaugural Diva Literary Prize for Fiction in 2017. Born in London, she spent her childhood in New Zealand, has written 16 novels, and is the co-director of the Fun Palaces campaign for greater access to culture for all, and was awarded an OBE for services to the Arts in 2016. Her website is www.stelladuffy.wordpress.com