Mary Bellamy is the sweetheart of the London stage, fluffy as only an elderly lady of 50( ) can be. Her fans and friends and who didn t adore, positively adore darling Mary? are heartbroken when somehow Mary manages to spritz herself not with her favorite perfume but with the deadly insecticide meant to be sprayed on the azaleas. Inspector Alleyn begins by smelling something fishy (everything he learns about lovely, fragile Mary suggests that in fact she was a rather vicious battleax), but he very quickly starts smelling something different something like a rat."

The impresario Peregrine Jay has fulfilled a long-cherished dream: Thanks to a very generous gift, he now owns the Dolphin Theatre, and has restored it to its former glory. To celebrate the re-opening, a no-expenses-spared production of The Glove, a new play about the discovery of a true Shakespearean accessory. London s chattering classes are abuzz with gossip about the theatre, rumors about Peregrine, critiques of the play. But when murder takes center-stage, everyone gets very quiet, and only Inspector Alleyn can persuade them to start chattering again this time, with a purpose."

We do love a man in a uniform, but the "Constables" in question are not policemen but paintings the landscapes, specifically, of the 19th-century painter John Constable. Agatha Troy (the artist wife, you ll remember, of Inspector Alleyn) has a special fondness for Constable s work, so she jumps at the chance to take a river-cruise through "Constable Country" in the east of England. Her enthusiasm dims a little when it becomes clear that the ticket became available at the last minute only because a previous passenger was murdered in his cabin and murdered, it seems, by a notorious...

In 1968 Ngaio Marsh took her own Roman holiday (in part to research Italian police procedures) and the change seems to have done her good: Both her British and U.S. agents believed When in Rome to be the finest novel in her "Inspector Alleyn" series. As is so often (and so satisfyingly) the case, the tale concerns a murder within a closed group in this case, a group of tourists visiting what Marsh calls the "Basilica di San Tommaso," who find themselves fumbling into a complex web of blackmail and drug-smuggling. Adding some irresistible color are depictions of both La Dolce Vita (of which...