It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model's pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been re-enacted in earnest. The model will never move again. It's a difficult case for Investigator Alleyn.

The Vulcan Theatre had been Martyn Tarne's last hope. She was glad to accept the humble job of dresser to its leading lady. And then came the opening night. To Martyn it brought a strange turn of fortune - but to one distinguished member of the cast it was to bring sudden and unforeseen death.

A mystery patron gives Peregrine Jay the bombed-out Dolphin Theatre and a glove that belonged to Shakespeare. Peregrine displays the glove 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.

Sir Hubert Handesley's lively weekend house-parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game. This time, though, there is a real corpse, with a real dagger in the back and all seven suspects have had time to concoct skilful alibis.

Rickie Alleyn was in the Channel Islands to write, but village life was tedious - until he saw the stablehand in the ditch. Dead, it seemed, from an unlucky jump. Rickie's father, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, was summoned to the scene, but when Rickie disappeared, it was the last straw.

Alleyn's friend, Nigel, stood near the centre of the stage. He had moved forward towards the wings, when a voice warned him to look out. An instant later, Inspector Alleyn hurled himself at Nigel, driving him backwards and out of the way of a falling object.

One cold night the police find their third corpse on the quayside - covered with flower petals and pearls. When a cargo ship with nine passengers sets sail Superintendent Roderick Alleyn joins it at Portsmouth - the murderer is known to be on board.

A cosy game of darts in a cosy English pub - until one of the players dies on the spot, after a small accident. Chief Inspector Alleyn knows it wasn't the dart that killed him; it was the prussic acid someone helpfully added to the cut.

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?

The victim was a deeply religious initiate who had trained for a month for her last ceremony. She was also a very beautiful woman. But Cara Quayne had provoked lust, jealousy - and murder. Roderick Alleyn suspected that more evil still lurked behind the Sign of the Sacred Flame...

Mary Bellamy, ageing darling of the London stage, holds a 50th birthday party. But someone uses a deadly insect spray on Mary instead of on the azaleas. The suspects are playing the part of mourners. Superintendent Alleyn has to find out which one has played the part of murderer.

An Inspector Alleyn mystery. Hundreds of unfortunates flock to taste the miraculous waters of the Cornish village of Portcarrow. Miss Pride wants to put an end to the villagers' trade in miracle cures, especially Miss Elspeth Cost's gift shop. But someone puts an end to Miss Cost herself.

It was a horrible death - Questing was lured into a pool of boiling mud. Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn, far from home on a wartime quest for German agents, knew that anyone could have killed the man - the English spies he despised, the Maoris he insulted or the spies he thwarted.

A Ngaio Marsh novel which features blood-curdling murders in the confines of a riverboat, the Zodiac, cruising through Constable country.

A body in the back of a taxi begins an elegantly constructed mystery, perhaps the finest of Marsh's 1930s novels.

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Peregrine Jay, owner of the Dolphin Theatre, is putting on a magnificent production of "Macbeth", the play that, superstition says, always brings bad luck. One night, the claymore swings and the dummy's head is more than real. Luckily, Chief Superintendent Roderick Alleyn is in the audience.

A Harley Street surgeon and his nurse are nervous to operate. The patient is the Home Secretary - and they both have good, personal reasons to wish him dead. Within hours he does die, although the operation itself was a complete success, and Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn must find out why.

Colonel Cartarette's body lies sprawled beside the River Chyne, beside him is the giant trout he has been trying to catch for years. They both died by violence - but it is the fish that will be playing the starring role in the murder investigation.

When the Sword Dancer's mock beheading becomes horribly real, it is Superintendent Roderick Alleyn who must discover who had the best motive for murder.