It was a horrible death â Maurice Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud and left there to die.
Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that any number of people could have killed him: the English exiles heâd hated, the New Zealanders heâd despised or the Maoris heâd insulted. Even the spies heâd thwarted â if he wasnât a spy himself...
Dame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895 and died in February 1982. She wrote over 30 detective novels and many of her stories have theatrical settings, for Ngaio Marshâs real passion was the theatre. She was both an actress and producer and almost single-handedly revived the New Zealand publicâs interest in the theatre. It was for this work that the received what she called her âdameryâ in 1966.