Died in the Wool

By: Ngaio Marsh

Narrated by: James Saxon

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

Critic reviews

"The brilliant Ngaio Marsh ranks with Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers." ( Times Literary Supplement)

"In her ironic and witty hands the mystery novel can be civilized literature." ( New York Times)

"Ngaio Marsh is one of the detective novelists whose books I regularly re-read, always the test of a good detective story." (P. D. James)

"In the front rank of crime-story writers." ( The Times)

Good story somewhat marred

James Saxon has recorded a number of Ngaio marsh books. He always starts overdramatizing and camping up the characters to an alarming amount and his accents are so thick you can hardly understand the words. Then he eventually settles down and does well

Death on a farm

Death and spies on a sheep farm in New Zealand. Paxton acts the parts beautifully. recommended

Quite enjoyable

An excellent reading of a good book. As a fan of DI Fox, his exclusion is the only negative I can think of.

Don't miss this one

I almost skipped reading this one because the setting was not in England. It is undoubtably the very best of her work.

Dull

I don't know if it is Ngaio Marsh's writing or John Saxon's reading, but I almost always have difficulty keeping my attention on her books. My mind rarely wanders when listening to a book, but with Marsh it is almost always the case. Her mysteries are so forgettable. I have been listening to all her work from the first in order and I could't tell you even the basic story line let alone the killer for most of them so far. Whereas with Agatha Christie I remember both for most of her work...even her bad spy thrillers. Saxon has a deep voice that could lull you into sleep, But he can switch into an over dramatic take on some character, especially one with an accent, and since this book takes place in New Zealand there is a lot of that. All in all Died in the Wool starts with an interesting discovery of the victim pressed into a wool bale. But as soon as Alleyn is on the scene and the suspects are telling their stories, it gets dull, dull, dull. It doesn't help that Alleyn is a pretty dull character at the center of all Marsh's novels.