Book Note: Ngaio Marsh, A Man Lay Dead

This is book 1 of the "Roderick Alleyn" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

This one has overtones of Poul Anderson's The Devil's Game. A house party of people chosen to be antagonistic to each other, with all sorts of overt and hidden historical connections. And they're to play "the murder game", an early predecessor to the modern murdery mystery weekend.

Surprising them completely (but not us, since we know we're reading a book), one of them turns up dead for real.

This one wasn't as much fun, but it was quite well constructed.