James Saxon has narrated 21 audiobooks on Listento.it by 3 authors, with an average listener rating of 4.2★ across 26 ratings. The most-rated is Death in a White Tie.
Tied Up in Tinsel
Summary
Christmastime in an isolated country house and, following a flaming row in the kitchen, there’s murder inside. When a much disliked visiting servant disappears without trace after playing Santa Claus, foul play is at once suspected - and foul play it proves to be. Only suspicion falls not on the staff but on the guests, all so unimpeachably respectable that the very thought of murder in connection with any of them seems almost heresy. When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn returns unexpectedly from a trip to Australia, it is to find his beloved wife in the thick of an intriguing mystery....
©1972 Original Text of 1972 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Death in a White Tie
Summary
The London season has begun. But while debutantes and chaperones plan their luncheons and balls a deadly blackmailer is stalking the highest echelons of society. Naturally, it falls to charming, aloof Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn - son of Lady Alleyn - to investigate the case. He has already planted his close friend Lord Robert at the scene. But someone else got to him first.... Death in a White Tie was first published in 1938 and is perhaps the finest of Marsh's 1930s novels - elegantly constructed, witty and marvellously entertaining. Please note: This is a vintage recording. The audio quality may not be up to modern day standards.
©1938 Original Text of 1938 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Vintage Murder
Summary
A touring theatre company in New Zealand forms the basis of one of Marsh’s most ambitious and innovative novels. New Zealand theatrical manager Alfred Meyer wanted to celebrate his wife’s birthday in style. The piece de résistance would be the jeroboam of champagne which would descend gently into a nest of fern and coloured lights on the table, set up onstage after the performance. But something went horribly wrong. Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn witnessed it himself. Was Meyer’s death the product of Maori superstitions? Or something much more down to earth?
©1937 Original Text of 1937 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Enter a Murderer
Summary
The crime scene was the stage of the Unicorn Theatre, when a prop gun fired a very real bullet; the victim was an actor clawing his way to stardom using bribery instead of talent; and the suspects included two unwilling girlfriends and several relieved blackmail victims. The stage is set for one of Roderick Alleyn's most baffling cases....
©1935 Original Text of 1935 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Clutch of Constables
Summary
A classic Ngaio Marsh novel which features blood-curdling murders in the confines of a riverboat, the Zodiac, cruising through Constable country. 'He looks upon the murders that he did in fact perform as tiresome and regrettable necessities', reflected Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn on the international crook known as 'the Jampot'. But it was Alleyn’s wife, Troy, who knew 'the Jampot' best: she had shared close quarters with him on the tiny pleasure steamer Zodiac, on a cruise along the peaceful rivers of 'Constable country'. And it was she who knew something was badly wrong even before Alleyn was called in to solve the two murders onboard....
©1968 Original Text of 1968 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Died in the Wool
Summary
Ngaio Marsh returns to her New Zealand roots to transplant the classic country house murder mystery to an upland sheep station on South Island - and produces one of her most exotic and intriguing novels. One summer evening in 1942, Flossie Rubrick, MP, one of the most formidable women in New Zealand, goes to her husband’s wool shed to rehearse a patriotic speech - and disappears. Three weeks later she turns up at an auction – packed inside one of her own bales of wool and very, very dead....
©1945 Original Text of 1945 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Death and the Dancing Footman
Summary
A winter weekend ends in snowbound disaster in a novel which remains a favourite among Marsh readers. It began as an entertainment: eight people, many of them enemies, gathered for a winter weekend by a host with a love for theatre. They would be the characters in a drama that he would devise. It ended in snowbound disaster. Everyone had an alibi - and most had motives as well. But Chief Detective Inspector Roderick Alleyn, when he finally arrived, knew it all hung on Thomas, the dancing footman....
©1942 Original Text of 1942 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Opening Night
Summary
Dreams of stardom had lured Martyn Tarne from faraway New Zealand to make the dreary, soul-destroying round of West End agents and managers in search of work. The Vulcan Theatre had been her last forlorn hope, and now, driven by sheer necessity, she was glad to accept the humble job of dresser to its leading lady. And then came the eagerly awaited opening night. To Martyn the night brought a strange turn of the wheel of fortune - but to one distinguished member of the cast it was to bring sudden and unforeseen death....
©1951 Original Text of 1951 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Last Ditch
Summary
Rickie Alleyn, son of the famed detective Roderick Alleyn, had taken to the peaceful Channel Island village of Deep Cove to write his book. However, soon enough the tedium of provincial life threatens to send him packing - until, that is, he finds a dead stablehand, and the sleepy community's world is upturned. His father is called to take proceedings into hand, but as a darker side to island life emerges, one of illegal drugs and smuggling, Rickie goes missing. Will Ngaio Marsh's stalwart detective be able to find his son in time?
©1977 Original Text of 1977 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Final Curtain
Summary
A country house murder, artistic insight and the postwar reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh’s wittiest and most readable novel. Agatha Troy, world-famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies. The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in - in the person of Troy’s long-absent husband, Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn....
©1947 Original Text of 1947 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Blandings Castle
Summary
The ivied walls of Blandings Castle have seldom glowed as sunnily as in these wonderful stories - but there are snakes in the rolling parkland ready to nip Clarence, the absent-minded Ninth Earl of Emsworth, when he least expects it. For a start the Empress of Blandings, in the running for her first prize in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show, is off her food - and can only be coaxed back to the trough by a call in her own language. Then there is the feud with Head Gardener McAllister, aided by Clarence's sister, the terrifying Lady Constance, and the horrible prospect of the summer fête - twin problems solved by the arrival of a delightfully rebellious little girl from London. But first of all there is the vexed matter of the custody of the pumpkin. Skipping an ocean and a continent, Wodehouse also treats us to some unputdownable stories of excess from the monstrous Golden Age of Hollywood.
©1971 The Estate of P.G. Wodehouse (P)2014 Audible, Inc.
When in Rome
Summary
Murder, blackmail and drug dealing on the Tiber combine in one of Ngaio Marsh’s liveliest and most evocative novels. When their guide disappears mysteriously in the depths of a Roman basilica, the members of Mr. Sebastian Mailer’s tour group seem strangely unperturbed. But when a body is discovered in an Etruscan sarcophagus, Superintendent Alleyn, in Rome incognito on the trail of an international drug racket, is very much concerned....
©1970 Original Text of 1970 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Death at the Bar
Summary
A classic Ngaio Marsh novel in which a game of darts in an English pub has gruesome consequences. At the Plume of Feathers in south Devon one midsummer evening, eight people are gathered together in the taproom. They are in the habit of playing darts, but on this occasion an experiment takes the place of the usual game - a fatal experiment which calls for investigation. A distinguished painter, a celebrated actor, a woman graduate, a plump lady from County Clare, and a Devonshire farmer all play their parts in the unravelling of the problem....
©1940 Original Text of 1940 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
False Scent
Summary
In a poisonous cloud of spray, the curtain falls on a drama queen. Little did beloved British actress Mary Bellamy know that she would be done in at her own birthday party - choked by toxic mist from the bottle of Slaypest, a deadly insecticide. Basking in the glow of her most adoring fans - who all happened to be her most duplicitous enemies - Mary would make her final performance. When Superintendent Roderick Alleyn arrives, he smells a rat amongst the contemptuous collection of theatre types detained at the party, for this case has the unmistakable scent of murder....
©1960 Original Text of 1960 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
The Wind in the Willows
Summary
When Mole goes boating with Ratty instead of doing his spring-cleaning, he discovers a whole new world. As well as adventures on the river and in the Wild Wood, there are high jinks on the open road with that reckless ruffian Mr Toad of Toad Hall. Ratty, Mole, Badger, and Toad become the firmest of friends, but after Toad's latest escapade, can they join together and beat the wretched weasels once and for all?
©1996 Penguin Books Ltd (P)1996 Penguin Books Ltd
Swing, Brother, Swing
Summary
Lord Pastern fired his revolver. The figure in the spotlight fell, and the coup-de-theatre had become murder. Could Inspector Alleyn believe Pastern had let hatred of his future son-in-law go too far? Or would the tangle of jealousies and blackmail among the guests reveal another murderer?
©1949 Original Text of 1949 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Death at the Dolphin
Summary
The restoration of a bombed-out London theatre ends in violent death - and one of Marsh’s most vivid and dramatic novels. When the bombed-out Dolphin Theatre is given to Peregrine Jay by a mysterious wealthy patron, he is overjoyed. And when the mysterious oil millionaire also gives him a glove that belonged to Shakespeare, Peregrine displays it in the dockside theatre and writes a successful play about it. But then a murder takes place, a boy is attacked, and the glove is stolen. Could it be that oil and water don’t mix? Inspector Roderick Alleyn is determined to find out....
©1967 Original Text of 1967 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Dead Water
Summary
The elderly Emily Pride is perfectly pleased to have inherited an island, even if her starchy pragmatism is ever so faintly appalled by the Pixie Falls spring and its reported miraculous healing properties. But really, the locals' attempts to capitalize on the 'miracles' are entirely too tacky - Ye Olde Gift Shoppe, the neon signs…not on Miss Emily’s watch, thank you. Of course, the locals are not exactly thrilled to give up their trade (Pixie Falls may be merely be known for healing warts, it’s true, but you take your shillings where you can find them). Could their frustration have bubbled up into murderous rage? Inspector Alleyn will have to sort it out. And this time, it’s personal.
©1964 Original Text of 1964 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Photo-Finish
Summary
The luxury mansion on New Zealand's Lake Waihoe was the ideal place for the world-famous soprano to rest after her triumphant tour. Chief Superintendent Alleyn and his wife were among the houseguests - but theirs was not a social visit. When tragedy struck, the peace of the island was shattered. With a houseful of suspects now isolated by one of the lake's sudden storms, Alleyn was to face one of his trickiest cases....
©1980 Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio
Death in Ecstasy
Summary
The poison was cyanide, slipped into the sacred wine of ecstasy just before it was presented to Miss Cara Quayne at the House of the Sacred Flame. The victim was a deeply religious initiate who had trained for a month for her last ceremony. She was also a very beautiful woman.... The suspects were the other initiates and the high priest. All claimed they were above earthly passions. But Cara Quayne had provoked lust, jealousy - and murder. Roderick Alleyn suspected that more evil still lurked behind the Sign of the Sacred Flame....
©1936 Original Text of 1936 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio