
Final Curtain
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Narrated by:
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James Saxon
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By:
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Ngaio Marsh
About this listen
A country house murder, artistic insight and the postwar reunion of Alleyn and Troy combine in Ngaio Marsh’s wittiest and most readable novel.
Agatha Troy, world-famous portrait painter, is inveigled into accepting a commission to paint the 70-year-old Sir Henry Ancred, Bart., the Grand Old Man of the stage. But just as she has completed her portrait, the old actor dies.
The dramatic circumstances of his death are such that Scotland Yard is called in - in the person of Troy’s long-absent husband, Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn....
©1947 Original Text of 1947 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse....
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Thank you Audible - best spent credit ever
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Excruciating awful narrator.
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Love these radio plays
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Wealthy Sir Hubert Handesley's original and lively weekend house parties are deservedly famous. To amuse his guests, he has devised a new form of the fashionable Murder Game, in which a guest is secretly selected to commit a 'murder' in the dark, and everyone assembles to solve the crime. But when the lights go up this time, there is a real corpse....
-
-
Classic Upper Crust Mystery
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By: Ngaio Marsh
-
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- The Man in the Queue; A Shilling for Candles; The Franchise Affair; To Love and Be Wise; The Daughter of Time; The Singing Sands; Miss Pym Disposes; Brat Farrar
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- Narrated by: Karen Cass
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- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Josephine Tey Collection includes unabridged recordings of Tey's 8 major novels in one audiobook, including all 6 of the novels in the Inspector Alan Grant series.
-
-
Thank you Audible - best spent credit ever
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By: Josephine Tey
-
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- By: Ngaio Marsh
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- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cryptic inscriptions in an antique Bible appear to record three gruesome deaths that took place in a quiet English village in 1779. Nearly 200 years later, a fourth person is found dead under similarly violent circumstances. As the investigation unfolds, suspicions are roused by the parallels with other events in the village’s history, and the book becomes key to unravelling a more than one mystery.
-
-
Excruciating awful narrator.
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By: Ngaio Marsh
-
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- Narrated by: Jeremy Clyde, Stephen Thorne, full cast
- Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
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Story
A collection of the BBC’s dramatisations of Ngaio Marsh’s most famous sleuth: Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn. Includes 'A Man Lay Dead', 'A Surfeit of Lampreys', 'Opening Night' and 'When in Rome'.
-
-
Love these radio plays
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By: Ngaio Marsh
-
The Wintringham Mystery
- Cicely Disappears
- By: Anthony Berkeley, Tony Medawar
- Narrated by: Mike Grady
- Length: 8 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stephen Munro, a demobbed army officer, reconciles himself to taking a job as a footman to make ends meet. Employed at Wintringham Hall, the delightful but decaying Sussex country residence of the elderly Lady Susan Carey, his first task entails welcoming her eccentric guests to a weekend house-party, at which her bombastic nephew—who recognises Stephen from his former life—decides that an after-dinner séance would be more entertaining than bridge. Then Cicely disappears!
-
-
Charming Light-hearted mystery
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By: Anthony Berkeley, and others
-
The Theft of the Iron Dogs
- By: E. C. R. Lorac
- Narrated by: David Thorpe
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While hot on the heels of serial coupon-racketeer Gordon Ginner, Chief Inspector MacDonald of Scotland Yard receives word of an intriguing incident up in Lancashire – the summer cottage of local farmer Giles Hoggett has been broken into, with an assortment of seemingly random items missing which include a complete reel of salmon line, a large sack, and two iron dogs from his fireplace. What first appears as a simple break-in quickly spirals into a mystery of contested land grabs for fishing between farmers, made all the more enticing to MacDonald when a body is then found in the river.
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From the authors of the best-selling series "Cherringham". This compilation contains episodes 1-3. "A shot in the dark": Sussex, England, 1929. Mydworth is a sleepy English market town just 50 miles from London. But things are about to liven up there considerably, when young Sir Harry Mortimer returns home from his government posting in Cairo, with his unconventional American wife - Kat Reilly. "A little Night murder": A young poacher is found shot dead in the woods of a grand estate near Mydworth. A sad accident it would seem.
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Overall
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Story
Understandably, Lord Burford had some misgivings about hosting another house party at Alderley, his beautiful country mansion. After all, the previous two could at best be described as disastrous, since a couple of their guests were bumped off during their stay on each occasion. But with family members travelling down for the funeral of an elderly relative, the Earl really had no choice but to offer them accommodation.
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Relaxing entertainment
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Three critically acclaimed recordings are joined together in this dazzling Agatha Christie Triple Bill, read by award-winning narrators Alison Larkin and James Warwick, star of the Partners in Crime TV series on Masterpiece Theater.
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Pitch perfect narration of Agatha Christie!
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Critic reviews
What listeners say about Final Curtain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cathy Puzey
- 06-22-16
Classic crime - well done!
Alleyn returning from abroad is thrown straight into a case, involving his beloved wife Troy.
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- ltufromberkeley
- 08-26-21
intricate and we'll performed
Marsh crafted an intricate mystery which has occasional bursts of humor. Beautifully performed by Saxon. Highly recommended
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- Christina
- 11-19-22
A good whodunnit excellently read
James Saxon is my favorite reader for British mysteries. He sets the tone with his characterizations which fit the time and place of the story perfectly.
And this is among my favorite Ngaio Marsh stories, with a plot twist deftly done that keeps you guessing.
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- Kristin
- 01-16-22
So good!
Love the language, the characters, the plot, the descriptions- an exceptional writer.So glad I discovered her!
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- Rick
- 04-13-20
Finally an excellent Marsh
I am listening to her works from the first and have so far found most of them forgettable with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions. Final Curtain is her best so far. Memorable characters, a good setting and a good mystery. Saxon also does an excellent job with the reading of this one, not as over the top as he can be with some previous books.
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- peter
- 08-20-21
Exceptionally entertaining
NM really was a very gifted writer and she shows all her wit and brilliant characterization ability in this tour de force. I think it’s certainly one of her best and one of my favorite novels in any genre. The narration by James Saxon is superb and perfectly complements this highly entertaining tale. Highly recommended
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- Mystery Maven
- 01-30-24
Mystery Maven
Good mystery, outstanding narration of all the looney characters, and sometimes very annoying. These are still good books, all these years later.
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- Kindle Customer
- 11-02-22
Not the best but well performed
This is not the best of Marsh's stories. The family is so horrid that the story doesn't grab until quite far in.
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- elderc
- 01-12-25
a good alleyn mystery, painful to listen to
I enjoyed the written book, but found this unlistenable. I finally stopped and pulled out my old paperback with its tiny print to finish reading it.
I know that the family of characters were mostly histrionic, but the narration was very irritating and hard to listen to, and most of the characters sounded alike. I stopped when Troy's voicing started sounding like the rest of the ensemble. I have never done this with an audible book before. I had turned in a couple of older purchases simply to be able to afford 2 new ones, but without good reason otherwise. This one is unreturnable, and now I know why some returns are allowable. (A Clutch of Constables, my favorite Alleyn book) was listenable because there were fewer histrionic characters, but in general suffered by the same sort of narration.
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