Death at the Dolphin

This article does not cite any sources. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (January 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Death at the Dolphin

First edition
Author	Ngaio Marsh
Language	English
Series	Roderick Alleyn
Genre	Detective fiction
Publisher	Collins Crime Club
Publication date	1967
Media type	Print
Preceded by	Dead Water
Followed by	Clutch of Constables

Death at the Dolphin is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh. It is the twenty-fourth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1967. The plot centers on a glove once owned by Hamnet Shakespeare, on display at a newly renovated theater called the Dolphin. The novel was published as Killer Dolphin in the United States. Several characters from the novel return in Marsh's final book, Light Thickens.

Awards and nominations[]

The book was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel of the Year in 1967, losing to Nicholas Freeling's The King of the Rainy Country.

Plot[]

On a whim, rising theatre director Peregrine Jay views a derelict Victorian playhouse, The Dolphin Theatre on London's South Bank, where he falls into a wartime bomb crater on the stage and is rescued from drowning by the theatre's owner, the enigmatic multi-millionaire Vassily Conducis, who listens to and finances the young theatre practitioner's vision of a restored Dolphin Theatre, which duly opens with the premiere of Jay's play 'The Glove", inspired by a cheverel glove Conducis owns and has shown to Jay, with faded documents suggesting it was made for Shakespeare's only son Hamnet, who died young. The glove is, of course, a public sensation and publicity coup for the new theatre and its opening production, which is a complete triumph, despite tensions among Jay's talented but fractious company. During the sold-out run, the glove is stolen and Harry Jobbins, the chirpy cockney nightwatchman is viciously battered to death by one of the two dolphin statues in the theatre foyer, commissioned by Conducis, while the obnoxiously precocious child actor playing Hamnet Shakespeare is attacked and all but killed. Inspector Roderick Alleyn, initially tasked with security arrangements for the glove, is assigned to investigate the murder and duly identifies the murderer, as well as the history of how Mr Conducis came to own the Shakespearian glove. The novel's murder plot is set against an engrossing account of how a historic London theatre is rescued from oblivion and a Shakespearian-themed modern play is produced, staged and launched into a solid West End triumph, with all the accompanying backstage dramas and tensions.

This article about a crime novel of the 1960s is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by . See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page.

• v
• t