Book Note: Ngaio Marsh, Scales of Justice

This is book 18 of the "Roderick Alleyn" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

A fine country village murder among the upper classes. And the title is a severe pun, referring to the identification of specific fish by their scales. There's also a nice buried historical mystery, where an important man was actually a traitor, helping the Germans before the war.

I'm reminded just how much I hate the period convention of having the reader present for conversations between key characters that are deliberately withheld from him. Even Sayers did it—once. I find it immensely annoying, and I consider it cheating of the first order; it means the reader doesn't have the information that the characters do.