I mentioned I'd had a birthday recently. It was one of 'those' birthdays, the one that is halfway between two big ones. I had a lovely day, spoke to all my chicks and had lovely gifts from them...birdfeeders and enough fat balls to feed the village from the Gamekeeper, a bright yellow notebook (for winter cheer) and pen holder from the Kayaker, and a parcel from Offspringette in New Zealand that included Ngaio Marsh Her Life in Crime by Joanne Drayton. I don't know about you but if someone gives me the gift of a book, whoever it may be, it becomes a special read. It has been chosen for me, just me and I was quickly into this one...
'While Ngaio Marsh had a flamboyant public persona, she was fiercely protective of her private life. And no one knows better how to cover tracks with red herrings and remove incriminating evidence than a crime fiction writer…Marsh one of the four Queens of Golden Age detective fiction, alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham.'
My Women's Lives shelves are bursting with biographies about women writers (mostly), and I had recently thought I should try and read of one life each month or so and then read something they had written. As she had just arrived, and as I was pining a little because I was in New Zealand this time last year, I made a start with Ngaio and emerged a few days later really impressed with her and what a good egg she was.
Born in Christchurch on South Island in 1895, the only child of good and doting parents, Ngaio grew up in the city, her family making their home out on the Port Hills. The Port Hills one of the first places I go to when I arrive for a visitation for the fabulous perspective on the city, the view across Lyttleton to Diamond Harbour and the sheer vastness of the land where I will spend the next three weeks.
Despite regular trips abroad it was to the family home, Marton Cottage in Cashmere, that Ngaio would always return for her entire life, never marrying but making countless cherished friends who shared her life. Ngaio's Christmas Tree party the stuff of legends apparently.
I was intrigued to read of a devastating incident in her father's life. A bank worker of the most diligent variety, imagine Henry Marsh's dismay on discovering at the end of a working day that his till, for which he was personally responsible, was £500 short. With a fair idea of who was responsible for the theft, but with no way of proving it, Henry had to pay back the money, a vast sum, from an inheritance, leaving the family short of money but, it would seem never short of love.
Educated in Christchurch before enrolling in the city's art school I was interested to read of Ngaio's close association with many of the artists I had come to know and love during my last visit. I spent a lot of time wandering around the art gallery and then borrowing books from the library (on Offspringette's ticket) which is how I came to read biographies of both Rita Angus and Olivia Spencer Bower while I was there. Both, I now discover, friends and peers of Ngaio...
I fell madly in love with Rita Angus's painting Cass Station, going back to see it at least three times, and then going back one last time to say goodbye to it.
but also stopping at the real Cass Station just so we could say I had been there...
In fact, as Joanne Drayton points out, Ngaio and her friends were the cream of the art school..
'Collectively they represented a phenomenal blossoming of post-war female talent. Not only did they share the ambition to become professional painters, but they knew it was an unconventional role.'
Ngaio would share a studio with Viola Macmillan Brown whose painting Across the Plains I was also standing in front of this time last year. It is the view from Cashmere and might it be a fair assumption that this was painted near to Ngaio's home.... I'd like to think so, and then like to take the liberty of imagining the two of them painting plein-air together
Ngaio was indeed an expert at covering her personal tracks and traces making a biography a difficult task, but she was also a generous and sociable woman. Not only a writer and artist but also a theatre director of note, and with many excellent productions to her name, all of which has left a trail out there which Joanne Drayton has followed assiduously, making this a hugely enjoyable read. Not the least of these trails is the critical reception received by her crime fiction..
'Commentators were now consistently identifying the qualities that set Ngaio apart from the plethora of other detective writers: her characterisation, her narrative ability, her ingenuity, and especially her humour, which performs the important function of making them more palatable.'
Hugely popular in the UK and a regular visitor here, eventually being made a Dame, it was interesting to learn that the war was no deterrent to the ascendency of the crime novel. As Joanne Drayton elaborates...
People continued to read crime fiction while bombs rained down and vast casualty lists were posted. Special pocket-sized editions of detective novels were produced for easy reading in bomb shelters and lending libraries posted crime sections close to bunker entrances. The demand for intriguing puzzle plots would soar.'
My one Ngaio Marsh book to date is an audio version of Surfeit of Lampreys which I enjoyed immensely and I have especially enjoyed discovering the background to the book and of Ngaio's friendship with the Rhodes family. Childless herself, Ngaio paid special and caring attention to the children of friends, often making financial provision for their education.
I have a very modest shelf of Ngaio Marsh's crime novels and will be interested to see if they stand the test of time given that I find Agatha Christie nigh on impossible to read. Had I read her as a teenager I think the die of a lifelong attraction would have been cast, but I didn't and I just can't make the Christie books work now. I have greater hopes for Ngaio Marsh now that I know so much more about her. A jolly good egg indeed, good to be reminded that here was a woman of many talents and an excellent book, highly recommended.
Meanwhile, I'm sure there must be plenty of Ngaio Marsh fans out there, do you have an recommendations..
And while we are on the subject of crime, any more good crime reads lately..
In fact, let's extend that to thrillers as well...
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