“Gentle Killer Celebrates Her Twenty-first Murder”

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29232, 16 June 1960, Page 16

“Gentle Killer Celebrates Her Twenty-first Murder”

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, June 14. “The gentle killer celebrates her twenty-first murder.” says the “Daily Mail” caption over an interview with the New Zealand author, Ngaio Marsh, whose new whodunit—her twenty-first —“False Scent,” is now in British bookshops.

Miss Marsh, who is described as a “merry, tall, handsome, 60-year-old New Zealander with a rich, deep voice musicians might call basso jolliflco,” has returned to London for a year’s stay. The main question the “Daily Mail” interviewer asked her was her opinion on why women made such good detective novel writers. “I have often wondered about this,” Miss Marsh told him. “Apart from the fact that murder is not a very feminine subject, there is the point that all careful, analytical thinking which is required is not normally the kind of thing the female mind is famed for. No, I don’t think it is because women are born schemers and plotters.

“I think it is because to write a successful detective story you have to take extraordinary pains to get all your details right, and I don’t think men can be bothered,” Miss Marsh said.

“My library is full of books on law and medicine. I sometimes have to spend days reading reference books just to get the background to support one sentence. You have to get everything right, otherwise people will dismiss you as a phoney. “Doctors are amongst my most

ardent readers. They are absolute dragons for detail. “Parsons like me, too, and so do policemen. I suppose it is because my kind of crime is so remote from anything they ever come across during their working lives.” Miss Marsh said play-producing was what she liked doing best. She did a “tremendous lot" of It in New Zealand, which she thought had more amateur dramatic companies to the square mile than any other country.