Ngaio Marsh: A Man Lay Dead (Inspector Alleyn # 1)

Alleyn looked at him with a curious air of compassion.
‘Not even yet?’ he said.
‘Whose were the prints?’
‘That I am not going to tell you. Oh, believe me, Bathgate, not out of any desire to figure as the mysterious omnipotent detective. That would be impossibly vulgar. No. I am not telling you because there is still that bit of my brains that cannot quite accept the QED of the theorem.

Well, that was one of the silliest GA detective stories I have read. Not bad or horrible or totally off-putting, but entirely implausible. So, implausible that I even want to call it “cute”. So, when Alleyn stated (see quote above) that the QED had not been established, yet, I may have laughed out loud. I may also have laughed again at the end of the book.

I am glad I have read A Man Lay Dead after having already another of Marsh’s books, because I already know that Marsh can write a splendid mystery. It’s just that A Man Lay Dead is not it.

Now that this first book is out of the way, I look forward to the rest of the series, tho.