Black As He's Painted / Last Ditch / Grave Mistake ~ Paperback ~ Ngaio Marsh

Commemorating 75 years since the Empress of Crime's first book, the tenth volume in a set of omnibus editions presenting the complete run of 32 Inspector Alleyn mysteries. BLACK AS HE'S PAINTEDCalled in to help with security arrangements for a presidential reception at a London embassy, Chief Superintendent Alleyn ensures the house and grounds are stiff with police. Nevertheless, an assassin strikes, and Alleyn finds no shortage of help, from Special Branch to a tribal court - and a small black cat named Lucy Lockett...LAST DITCHYoung Rickie Alleyn has come to the Channel Islands to write, but village life seems tedious - until he finds the stablehand in a ditch, dead from an unlucky jump. But Rickie notices something strange and his father, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, is discreetly summoned to the scene, when Rickie disappears...GRAVE MISTAKEWith two husbands dead, a daughter marrying the wrong man and a debilitating disease, it is no wonder that Sybil Foster took her own life. But Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn doesn't believe she was the type to kill herself - and he thinks someone else has made a very grave mistake...Author BiographyDame Ngaio Marsh was born in New Zealand in 1895 and died in February 1982. She wrote over 30 detective novels and many of her stories have theatrical settings, for Ngaio Marsh's real passion was the theatre. She was both actress and producer and almost single-handed revived the New Zealand public's interest in the theatre. It was for this work that the received what she called her 'damery' in 1966.