{"id":10267,"date":"2012-06-13T16:38:23","date_gmt":"2012-06-13T21:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/?p=10267"},"modified":"2012-06-13T16:45:46","modified_gmt":"2012-06-13T21:45:46","slug":"classic-british-cozy-mystery-with-classic-british-cozy-mystery-dialogue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/classic-british-cozy-mystery-with-classic-british-cozy-mystery-dialogue\/","title":{"rendered":"Classic British Cozy Mystery with Classic British Cozy Mystery Dialogue"},"content":{"rendered":"

A little while ago, I was driving somewhere, listening to Death in Ecstasy<\/em><\/strong> by Ngaio Marsh<\/strong>. (And, incidentally, loving it!) The only problem I have with audio books is that you can’t simply mark the spot with a bookmark so you can refer to it later. In this case, I thought some of the dialogue was so clever, I simply HAD to go find a place to park, in order to transcribe the words>>> which meant having to reverse and play my audio book several times. (So, these might not be the exact words, but if they aren’t, they are really close.)<\/p>\n

For those of you who haven’t yet<\/em> read any of the Ngaio Marsh<\/a> Inspector Alleyn<\/strong> mysteries, shame on you! They are British Cozy Mystery classics, some of the best!<\/p>\n

What I found endearing about the following conversation that occurs between Inspector Roderick Alleyn and Nigel Bathgate (a journalist cohort), is the way Marsh takes the reader along for a ride with these two fictional characters, discussing mystery books written by contemporary authors of Marsh’s. She is able to make the reader (just about!) forget he\/she is reading about fictional characters.<\/p>\n

Question regarding who the murderer could be:<\/p>\n

“… \u00a0“let’s pretend it’s a detective novel. Where would we be by this time? About halfway through, I should think. Well, who’s your pick?”<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/p>\n

“It depends on the author. If it’s Agatha Christie, Miss Wades … guilt drips from every page. Dorothy Sayer’s Lord Peter would plump for … Inspector French would go for…” \u00a0(Inspector French was the fictional character in Freeman Wills Crofts’ mystery books, written at the same time.)<\/p>\n

I found it to be quite clever that Marsh would have her fictional characters refer to current mystery authors, as if her fictional characters weren’t exactly that: fictional characters!<\/p>\n

When I told my husband about this, he quickly responded that he thinks Agatha Christie had her fictional characters – Tommy and Tuppence – also name current mystery authors in their dialogue.<\/p>\n

Can you think of any other Cozy Mystery authors’ fictional characters who refer to real Cozy Mystery authors?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A little while ago, I was driving somewhere, listening to Death in Ecstasy by Ngaio Marsh. (And, incidentally, loving it!) The only problem I have with audio books is that you can’t simply mark the spot with a bookmark so you can refer to it later. In this case, I thought some of the dialogue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-authors","7":"category-books","8":"category-cozy-mystery-administrators-observations","9":"entry","10":"override"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pI0sr-2FB","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cozy-mystery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}