Ngaio Marsh's Death of a Peer (AKA A Surfeit of Lampreys) #1940Club

"It was some good-for-nothing out in the street. One of these Nazzys. The police will soon have him locked up."

[Spoiler alert! 😉] It wasn't one of those Nazis.

There are one or two quick allusions to events of the era, but mostly this feels like a interwar book. "The whole thing's lousy with lords and ladies," says Inspector Fox.

There have been ennobled Lampreys ever since one did 'some fishy bit of hanky-panky for Good Queen Anne or one of her ministers.' Lord Charles Lamprey is the second son, improvident, and head of a large family. It's his older brother that's murdered, in the lift at Lord Charles' London apartment. Since Lord Charles was hoping to get cash from his older brother and had not, he's clearly a prime suspect.

The novel starts in New Zealand, though, where Roberta (Robin) Grey becomes friends with the family. In New Zealand Robin's already half in love with Henry, Lord Charles' oldest son and when her parents die and she's sent off to live with an aunt in England, she's not entirely sad. We get a few amusing pages of a provincial's first arrival in London before the main event (together with Superintendant Roderick Alleyn and Inspector Fox and the whole crew) arrives.

The puzzle in this one is pretty successful, and I got to the end without realizing who had done it. Still the best thing in the novel has to be the Micawber-ish Lampreys; they're charming, witty, hapless, and (unlike the Micawbers) compulsively given to fudging the truth. You'd think that last quality might detract from the charm, but they do it to save each other, and it *is* useful in a mystery novel. Not that Alleyn or Fox is ever be-fudged.

A strong entry in the Marsh canon, I thought, though I preferred her other 1940 book, Death at the Bar, that I read earlier this year.

Good for My Reader's Block Vintage Mystery challenge.

Vintage Mystery, Gold, Glove. The gloves are a crucial clue.

And it's the week of the 1940 Club!

Marsh dated the book December, 1939 in New Zealand, at the end. My copy is copyrighted 1940. The Internets are a bit uncertain: some calling it a 1940 book and some a 1941. Publishing was becoming restricted by then and it may very well have different release dates in different countries. But I'm just going to stick my fingers in my ears, and unlike Roderick Alleyn, ignore any facts that contradict what I want to believe. La, la, la. It's a 1940 book!