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Book 20: Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh, audiobook review

This isn't a review of the book, as much as of the narrator of the audio book version.

Artists in Crime is among of the better of Ngaio Marsh's Chief Inspector Alleyn novels, and one of the ones I occasionally reread - not so much for the murder plot, which is gruesome and more than a little melodramatic, albeit clever - but for the romance.

It's not a romance novel per se, but the side plot concerns Alleyn's very tentative courtship of his future wife, artist Agatha Troy. They had met in a previous book, where he was interested in and attracted to her while she was in equal parts intrigued by him and annoyed with herself for being so. In this book we get to see how she begins to accept that she has feelings for him, and he to have some hope that she may reciprocate his feelings for her. It is not the same breathtaking romance arc as in contemporary author Dorothy L. Sayer's detective novels, to which some have drawn parallels, but is quite satisfying even so.

Philip Franks does a good job of the narrating, making all the key characters stand out enough that one can recognise them by the changes in intonation, cadence, tone and accent, without making anyone sound ridiculous. However, I did find myself so irrationally annoyed by his pronunciation of "Alleyn" that I had to take a long break before I could continue listening to the book. I don't know if the assertion of the author of the Wikipedia page about the pronunciation is what Marsh had in mind, but I happen to agree that "Alleyn" should be pronounced the same as "Allen", whereas Franks pronounces the "y", turning what I think should be ALL-en into AhLL-EY-n. It doesn't help that the other Marsh narrator I have listened to, James Saxon, pronounces it the other way. But this is really a minor quibble once one gets used to it. Mostly, it is a good book, well read.
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