A Man Lay Dead (Roderick Alleyn #1)

A Man Lay Dead is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the first novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1934. The plot concerns a murder committed during a detective game of murder at a weekend party in a country house. Although there is a side-plot focused on Russians, ancient weapons, and secret societies, the murder itself concerns a small group of guests at Sir Hubert Handesley's estate. The guests include Angela North (Sir Hubert's niece), Charles Rankin (a 46- or 47-year-old man about town), Nigel Bathgate (Charles's cousin and a gossip reporter), Rosamund Grant, and Mr and Mrs Arthur Wilde. Also in attendance are an art expert and a Russian butler. Unlike later novels, this novel is more focused on Nigel Bathgate and less so on Alleyn. During the detective game of murder, one of the guests is secretly selected to be the murderer, with a victim of his own choosing. At the time of the murderer's choice, he taps the victim on the shoulder, indicating that "You're the corpse". At that point, the lights go out, a gong rings, and then everyone assembles to determine who did it. It is all intended to be light-hearted fun, except that the corpse is for real. A Man Lay Dead was the first novel Marsh had written, although she had written some plays and short stories. In years to come she would "cringe at the thought of her first novel with its barely plausible story line, shallow characterization and confined setting, but it was her entrée to crime fiction writing" and exemplifies the cozy detective novel form, set in a single main setting (the country house mystery).
Marsh says that she started writing about Alleyn in 1931 when the Murder Game was popular at English weekend parties. After reading a detective story by Christie or Sayers on a wet Saturday afternoon in London she wondered whether she could write something in the genre and bought six exercise books and a pencil at a local stationer's.