False Scent

254 pages. Small octavo (7 1/2" x 5") bound in original publisher's black cloth with silver lettering to spine in original jacket. First British edition.

False Scent is a detective novel by New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh; it is the twenty-first novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1960, by Collins in the UK and Little, Brown in the USA. The plot concerns the murder of a West End stage actress during her 50th birthday party, and continues Marsh's fascination with the theatre and with acting.

False Scent was well received and sold well, although biographer Joanne Drayton describes it as a "cleverly characterized but, after Alleyn's investigation begins, rather inert novel", and writes of Marsh dramatising the novel with a great family friend Eileen Mackay for a Worthing repertory company ("she wrestled with what she believed was one of her weaker novels"), quoting Marsh's own typically modest comment: "I think the fault may well be that like so many of my books it falls between teckery [as she termed her detective fiction] and a comedy of manners." The novel's theatrical world and characters, as in many of Marsh's detective novels, are entirely convincing, offering two of the writer's most characteristic talents: a gruesomely ingenious murder method and plot in the classic whodunit style, along with an entertaining social comedy of manners.

Condition: Previous owner's name and date to front paste down, foxing to page ends. Jacket spine ends chipped with closed edge tears else very good in like jacket.