DEATH IN ECSTACY

TITLE: DEATH IN ECSTACY
AUTHOR: NGIAO MARSH
Date: 07/09/2009
Grade: 4
Details: Insp. Alleyn Mystery
Audio: 8 Cd's / 7 hours 52 minutes
Narrator: James Saxon
Library

When Nigel Bathgate, journalist and friend of Alleyn's, sneaks his way into a curious religious ceremony one rainy night, he is hoping for some distraction and maybe a story. What he ends up witnessing is murder.
Cara Quayne had been practising for her role in the ceremony for a month. But only moments after drinking the sacred wine of ecstacy she is dead. Poisoned with cyanide.
The group of suspects is limited to her fellow initiates and the high priest, but there are plenty of motives; jealousy, lust, money, and those are only the immediately obvious ones. Alleyn and his team will dig up more dirt before the murderer is revealed.
I had read this book before, but so long ago that the story was virtually new to me. I still enjoy these mysteries featuring Alleyn, a lot, although they do suffer from the same problem as a lot of mysteries written around the same time; Not all information is shared with the reader, giving the fictional detective an unfair advantage over the reader when it comes to solving the mystery.