MONEY IN THE MORGUE

Roderick Alleyn is back in this unique crime novel begun by Ngaio Marsh during the Second World War and now completed by Stella Duffy.

Mr Glossop is on his regular run delivering wages to the hospitals scattered across New Zealand’s Canterbury plains. When his car breaks down, he is forced to stay the night at Mount Seager Hospital, twenty miles from the nearest town, where soldiers recovering from scarlet fever are giving the nursing staff a hard time. When Mr Glossop’s payroll disappears from a locked safe and the hospital’s death toll starts to rise faster than normal, can the appearance of an English detective working in counterespionage be just a lucky coincidence or an indication that something more sinister is afoot?

Renowned with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham as one of the four Golden Age ‘Crime Queens’, Ngaio Marsh published 32 novels featuring Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn between 1934 and her death in 1982. In 1945 she put aside a new book, Money in the Morgue, after writing just the opening chapters. Stella Duffy’s masterful completion of this unfinished novel celebrates both the style and substance of Dame Ngaio’s accomplished storytelling and will delight both fans of the Alleyn Mysteries and new readers who through this book are about to discover them for the first time…

Dame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895. Along with Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers she was admired as one of the original `Queens of Crime', best known for her 32 crime novels featuring Detective Roderick Alleyn, published between 1934 and 1982, the year she died. In 1949 she had one million copies published on a single day (the 'Marsh Million'), a distinction she shared only with George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Agatha Christie. Many of her stories have theatrical settings, reflecting Ngaio Marsh's real passion, and as both actress and producer she almost single-handedly revived the New Zealand public's interest in the theatre. It was for this work that the received what she called her `damery' in 1966. Stella Duffy is an acclaimed novelist and theatremaker who has twice won a prestigious CWA Dagger for her short stories, she won Stonewall Writer of the Year twice and the inaugural Diva Literary Prize for Fiction in 2017. Born in London, she spent her childhood in New Zealand, has written 16 novels, and is the co-director of the Fun Palaces campaign for greater access to culture for all, and was awarded an OBE for services to the Arts in 2016. Her website is www.stelladuffy.wordpress.com