L'assassin aux fleurs (alkuperäinen julkaisuvuosi 1958; vuoden 1995 painos)

Forced and workmanlike, with her trademark theatrical side pushed far to the background, and a completely unbelievable killer ginned up out of bad psychology texts. Subtracting another star for lax of Fox. ( )

Alleyn has to discover which member of a ship's passengers is serial killer, if indeed any of them, while undercover and with a ship's captain who doesn't believe the killer is on board. Marsh does an excellent job of describing the characters and growing tension between them. I suspected the guilty party but only as much as I suspected each of the suspects in turn - the denouement was splendid! ( )

Warning: this review contains spoilers

****

Alleyn is sent aboard the Cape Farewell to uncover a murderer among the passengers: specifically, the “Flower Murderer” who strangles women and leaves flowers on their corpses. Along the way he enlists the help of two of the men, ruling them out as suspects. And because the women are considered to be above suspicion, the circle is limited even further. As a result, I didn’t find the solution as satisfactory as I might otherwise have. (I was expecting one of the men he’d trusted to turn out to be the murderer—wouldn’t that have been a turn-up!) ( )

i didn't really care who the killer was. i wished the killer would hurry up and kill that stupid victim who obviously was going to be the victim. because this was a condensed book i couldn't figure out why we were hearing so much about dennis. ( )

This one has grown on me. Alleyn is sent to sea on a cruise (a freighter carring a small number of passengers - as was quite common once) on the hunch that serial killer has shipped for the voyage. The delight in this is the small number of characters interacting as we count down the days to the next outburst. Once again NM shows her anti-gay colours but otherwise really enjoyable read.
Additional comments on re-read: Interesting description of early reality TV as "spiritual strip tease", not quite as anti-gay as I thought on first reading. Love the play on words in the title (nautical vs burial shrouds). ( )