Opening Night

Martyn Tarne is in need of help... make that a great need, just a couple of weeks in England arriving from her native New Zealand the poor, nineteen-year- old girl wants to be a star on the London stage, but first any job will do. Luck... she has none, all her money was stolen on the long, lonely sh......more

Dame Ngaio Marsh has pulled it off big-time in this one. This mystery which moves at breakneck pace takes place over a period of four days, during the rehearsals and opening night of the play "Thus to Revisit". The author draws her knowledge of the stage enormously, and we are presented with the spe......more

This is my first read of a mystery written by Ngaio Marsh. The New Zealand author has a distinctive writing style, which I grew to like. She postpones the murder and its subsequent investigation until late in her narrative. Again, it works successfully. The setting for this mystery is a theater and......more

Ngaio Marsh is always a favorite because her characters are so interesting. The murder plot is average as far as plots go, but I must confess, I have not found many plots by any author that were all that earth shattering. However, if the characters are interesting, I'm good. It's almost a hundred pag......more

Second Read Now that I'm reading Marsh's books systematically in order, I find this one to be one of her best. She is at her strongest when dealing with people and situations of the theater, as she does in this novel. The mystery was fairly transparent but it didn't really matter. To me, the story wa......more