Black As He's Painted

first publication date:  1974
part of the series:  Roderick Alleyn
original title:  Black As He's Painted
original language:  English
narrative location:  London
followed by:  Last Ditch

Black As He's Painted (1974) is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh, the 28th to feature Roderick Alleyn. The plot concerns the newly independent fictional African nation of Ng'ombwana, whose president and Alleyn went to school together, and a series of murders connected to its embassy in London. The novel was written in New Zealand in the late Spring and Summer of 1973, and a year later was on the Sunday Times best-seller list in the UK, as well as proving a best-seller in the USA. Marsh's first biographer Margaret Lewis quotes a letter Marsh wrote in March 1973: "I've gone into purdah with a new book. It's always a huge effort to get back into harness after an interval in the theatre and this time it's been uphill all the way... I've saddled myself this time with a complicated and hideously exacting mise-en-scene and am just crossing the halfway mark, full of black forebodings laced with pale streaks of hope." Dr Lewis quotes Marsh's editor at Collins, Robert Knittel, writing in September 1973: "I have just finished reading your latest novel and I think it is splendid. A real vintage Ngaio Marsh." Source: Wikipedia (en)

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Work - wd:Q4920293

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