Ngaio Marsh

On the stage of the Unicorn Theatre, a prop gun fires a very real bullet, killing an actor clawing his way to stardom using bribery instead of talent. The suspects include two unwilling girlfriends and several relieved blackmail victims. The stage is set for one of Roderick Alleyn's most baffling cases…

On April Fool's Day the body of Mr Cartell is found in a ditch. Why was a letter of condolence sent before the body was found and what were the family squabbles all about?

Sir Hubert Handesley's extravagant weekend house-parties are deservedly famous for his exciting Murder Game, but when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse with a real dagger in the back. All seven suspects have skilful alibis - so Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn has to figure out the whodunit…

A collection of the BBC's dramatisations of Ngaio Marsh's most famous sleuth: Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn. This collection would include the following works by Ngaio Marsh: A Man Lay Dead - The gentleman detective tackles a country house party murder. A Surfeit of Lampreys - Gentleman sleuth Inspector Alleyn probes a grisly death of the head of a spendthrift aristocratic family. Opening Night - When a leading actor is found gassed in his dressing room it looks like suicide. But it transpires he was so detested that everyone had a motive for his murder. When In Rome - 1970s Rome. Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn is incognito and on the trail of a vast drugs syndicate - and some exceptionally unsavoury blackmail. But he hasn't reckoned on murder.

From the leading lady's liaison to the harassment of an aging juvenile lead -- there's never a dull moment at the Vulcan Theatre. But vanity and hysterics, suspicion, jealousy and superstition are upstaged by a death on opening night. Was it really suicide? Or a macabre encore to a long-ago murder in the same backstage room? Scotland Yard's Inspector Alleyn sets to work assembling a cast of suspects for the final curtain.