Ngaio Marsh Crime Queen

 

For the film critic badge, I needed to watch and review a documentary.  Having recently watched a documentary on PBS about Agatha Christie, as well as one about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I thought it would be interesting to watch a documentary about another mystery writer.  When I found Ngaio Marsh Crime Queen on YouTube, I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn more about the life of the creator of Inspector Alleyn.

A bit of background: the early twentieth century, specifically the years between the two world wars, are known as the golden age of detective fiction.  If you look into the history of detective fiction, especially the golden age, you will soon hear the phrase "queens of crime".  This refers to the women authors who dominated the field.  Agatha Christie is the undisputed Queen of Crime (still the best selling author in the world!) but there are three other women generally included in that list as well: Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh.  

Having a strong interest in golden age detective fiction in general and the queens of crime specifically, I looked for documentaries on these three authors to watch for this badge.  As I said, I was looking forward to learning more about Ngaio Marsh.  Except I didn't really.  The documentary, which was based on a book, seemed aimed at folks who already knew the facts of Ngaio's life and were looking to get to know a different side of her.  Since I don't really have the facts of Ngaio's life, I found the documentary to be a bit bewildering, if I am being honest.  In fact, the documentary seemed very focused on her sexuality without ever saying that directly. While I have no problem discussing that, I didn't have a context for it.  

In addition to not actually giving us any biographical facts, the documentary had a weird conceit in that the host was pretending to be Roderick Alleyn, the detective in Marsh's books.  And everyone being interviewed had to act like they were talking to Roderick Alleyn.  It was really weird.

 h45/ (The h45/ was typed by Bundle when she sat on my computer.  Since the blog is named for her, I am leaving it.)

In any case, I highly recommend reading Ngaio Marsh's mysteries.  Some favorites: A Surfeit of Lampreys, Death and the Dancing Footman, Overture to Death, and Scales of Justice.