When lovely Cara Quayne dropped dead to the floor after drinking the ritual wine at the House of the Sacred Flame, she was having a religious experience of a sort unsuspected by the other initiates. Discovering how the fatal prussic acid got into the bizarre group's wine is but one of the perplexing riddles that confronts Scotland Yard's Inspector Roderick Alleyn when he's called to discover who sent this wealthy cult member to her untimely death

I need an additional favourite crime writer like I need a hole in the head!

I believe this is the 4th in the series, written during the 1930s and therefore a contemporay of Agatha Christie.

The dialogue between Alleyn and Fox is witty (but I can see the potential to be annoying if it was the same in every book), and there's some implied world-awareness put into the book about the acolytes that got the message across without being too in-your-face about it ("I think the Greeks may have a word for them" being just one example).

Anyway, cant believe that I've got this far without reading Ngaio Marsh books before, and need to keep an eye out for more! ( )

Distracted and Ruined
Review of the Felony & Mayhem Press Kindle eBook edition (2013) of the Geoffrey Bles hardcover original (1936)

I found myself completely distracted by the homophobic asides in this now dated 1936 mystery. The number of putdowns was so over the top that I started marking them in my Kindle notes. A sampling here:

"What a loathly, what a nauseating, what an unspeakable little dollop." "that little beast", “Fauntleroy take little Eric", "Gemini, possibly heavenly", "a little pig", "that little animal", "horrible youth", "unattractive", "two hothouse flowers", "perhaps the Greeks had a word for him", "those two queens", "little drip", "a monster'', "that sissy", "the unspeakable", "you two bloody little pansies."

This was accompanied by adjectives and verbs of descriptions and actions which again portrayed the same characters as willowy… glided… fluted… begged… bleated… flounced… etc. as further putdowns. This was by both the investigators and the other suspects.

There were also insults of other nationalities (the French in this case) and one of the classic racist asides observing another character who refrained from saying something because they were “too white to say so.”

It all made the actual mystery seem like an afterthought, perhaps it was misdirection so that you aren’t paying attention to the actual murderer? Otherwise this could have been an interesting investigation, based as it apparently was on an actual cult temple from the 1890s in New Zealand which was led by an American conman. The action takes place in London, England though, as do most of the Roderick Alleyn mysteries. Ngaio Marsh found ways to bring him to her home ground of New Zealand occasionally as well.

See photograph at https://teara.govt.nz/files/28397-atl_1.jpg
Photograph of the 'Temple of Truth' in Christchurch, New Zealand, the rumoured inspiration for the ‘House of the Sacred Flame‘ in ‘Death in Ecstasy’. Image sourced from The Encyclopaedia of New Zealand.

I read several of Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyns during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 as I was regularly digging through my old mystery paperbacks for re-read possibilities. I don’t remember any of those having this sort of bigotry.

See book cover at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/28/DeathInEcstacy.jpg
Cover of the original hardcover edition of ‘Death in Ecstasy’ (1936) as published by Geoffrey Bles. Image sourced from Wikipedia.

I read Death in Ecstasy through a $1.99 Kindle Deal of the Day in 2023 from Amazon thinking that it would be reliable Golden Age Mystery. It seemed instead that the 1930s was a golden age of homophobia and racism.

Trivia and Links
Death in Ecstasy was adapted for television in 1964 as Season 1 Episode 11 of the Detective (1964-1969) series which based its scripts on dozens of crime novels by different authors. I could not find a posting of it on the internet. Although there was a later Alleyn Mysteries TV series (1990-1994), Death in Ecstasy was not included in those adaptations.

Death in Ecstasy was adapted as a BBC radioplay in 1969 and you can hear that audio recording on YouTube here. NOTE: I have not listened to this, but I can’t imagine they would have retained the homophobic and racist elements. ( )

Summary: Nigel Bathgate happens upon the strange pagan rites at the House of the Sacred Flame just in time to witness the death of Cara Quayne, the Chosen Vessel, when she imbibes a chalice of wine laced with cyanide.

Felony & Mayhem Press has been re-printing the Roderick Alleyn mysteries by legendary mystery writer, Ngaio Marsh, one of the “Queens of Crime,” along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. Her main character was Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a gentlemanly and understated detective whose “Watson” is a newspaperman, Nigel Bathgate. His crime investigation team includes Detective-Inspector Fox and his fingerprint expert Detective-Sergeant Bailey.

This story begins when Bathgate, bored on a rainy night, slips into the services of the House of the Sacred Flame, down the street from his flat. Fascination with the pantheon of statues, the worshipers and the mystical rite with Initiates who each identify with a god turns to horror at the culmination of the ceremony. The Chosen Vessel, a single woman of some means accepts a chalice of wine from Jasper Garnette, the Officiating Priest. drinks deeply anticipating spiritual ecstasy. Instead she gasps, her face contorted and collapses. An onlooking physician, Dr. Kasbek smells the scent of potassium cyanide, and Alleyn and his team are called in.

The lead suspects are Garnette and the other Initiates, each of who drank of the chalice. Samuel Ogden, the warden was a businessman ostensibly from America. Raoul de Ravigne, another warden had been enamored with the victim, who was fond of him as a friend, to the point of leaving him her house in her will. Maurice Pringle is an excitable young man who is suffering an addiction to opioids. His fiance, and the youngest initiative is Janey Jenkins, sweet and loving. Ernestine Wade was the oldest while Dagmar Candour was jealous of Cara’s affections toward Raoul, and her being favored as the Chosen Vessel.

Much of the action hinges around a book found hidden in Garnette’s bookcase that falls open to a recipe for homemade cyanide. It came from Mr. Ogden’s books, attracted attention at a party at Ogden’s, then disappeared about the time Claude Wheatley, one of two acolytes, picks up some books for Garnette. Then there are the missing bonds from Garnette’s safe–bonds given for a new building by Cara Quane–and the visit by Cara to his office the afternoon of her death and the will she changed that same afternoon.

What I liked about this story was the relationship of Alleyn and Bathgate–delightful repartee between them as they sort out the evidence of the case. Alleyn is also fascinating in his instincts as to how to interview each suspect. Particularly intriguing is his toughness with the addict, Maurice Pringle, that turns out to be tough love. We see in Alleyn a combination of someone who can be dogged in pursuit of a murderer who has concealed his or her identity well, as well as genuine compassion for lives unraveled by those who have betrayed their trust. Marsh offers just enough twists to keep it interesting, a likable recurring ensemble, and a timely and satisfying denouement. ( )

Interesting when you think about these sorts of mysteries, you never think they get as ugly as this one does. A woman dies horrible during a religious ceremony, poison. The cast of characters are either sad or devious. The Detective Inspect says this will be an ugly case, but an involving and well plotted on. ( )

I struggled with this one....all i can say is thank god i did not start with this Marsh book, because i may likely have never tried another... I have enjoyed the handful i have read up until now, but this one is a near fail for me. Basically, I did not like anyone involved in the book....not even sure i liked Alleyn in the beginning. Weird setting, odd, unlikable characters, and i struggled to care about any of it. There was also some rather harsh treatment of 2 gay characters....from EVERYONE!!!! That was just different.....completely different time, i know, but harsh it was. The final 20-30 pages barely redeemed it for me from being a 2-star.....proceed with caution...... ( )