21. Grave Mistake by Ngaio Marsh

Finally, a Ngaio Marsh that is fairly easy to read and follow.  Grave Mistake is pretty much a classic English village cozy whodunnit.  I was a bit fuzzy on the details but was suspicious about halfway through and felt strongly before the last quarter who the murderer was.  This is a sign that it was one of Marsh's more forgiving mysteries. 

The story begins from the point of view of a middle-aged playwrite, Verity, thinking about the various people in her local choir.  She is the most self-aware and I thought she might be the protagonist at first.  The plot involves an attractive and wealthy widow who is somewhat of a character and a hypochondriac, her eligible daughter, their new exaggeratedly Scotch gardener (named Bruce Gardener), the nouveau-riche Mediterranean businessman and his attractive son, the cad doctor from Verity's past and a few other cast of characters.  When the widow is found dead, at first believed by suicide, in her room at the spa/asylum (where the cad doctor is newly in residence), Inspector Alleyn is brought in.  Verity becomes more of a information hub for the book at this point, though we also get a storyline about a potential romance between her and the nouveau-riche guy (which sadly never reaches its fruition).

As usual, I enjoyed Alleyn's expertise and easy, supportive manner with his underlings.  There is a great scene at the end where they have to dig up a grave in heavy downpour.  The writing was very evocative and combined well with the suspense of the outcome (which I had guessed; wasn't that hard at this point).  There was one slightly false note which was that I found it unrealistic that Alleyn and Fox would have believed Gardener's story of it being a total coincidence that he ended up working for the widow of his old captain in WWII.  Still, a fun read.