''Clutch of Constables'' is a

detective novel Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

Ngaio Marsh Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh (; 23 April 1895 – 18 February 1982) was a New Zealand mystery writer and theatre director. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966. As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Det ...

; it is the twenty-fifth novel to feature

Roderick Alleyn Roderick Alleyn (pronounced "Allen") is a fictional character who first appeared in 1934. He is the policeman hero of the 32 detective novels of Ngaio Marsh. Marsh and her gentleman detective belong firmly in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, ...

, and was first published in 1968. The plot concerns

art forgery Art forgery is the creating and selling of works of art which are falsely credited to other, usually more famous artists. Art forgery can be extremely lucrative, but modern dating and analysis techniques have made the identification of forged art ...

, and takes place on a cruise on a fictional river in the

Norfolk Broads Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North ...

; the "Constable" referred to in the title is

John Constable John Constable (; 11 June 1776 – 31 March 1837) was an English landscape painter in the Romanticism, Romantic tradition. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for revolutionising the genre of landscape painting with his pictures of Dedha ...

, whose works are mentioned by several characters.

Plot summary

The novel is structured around a training course Marsh's series detective, Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, is giving to trainee police detectives, with specific reference to his successful identification and capture of the international fraudster, crook and killer 'The Jampot' also known as Foljambe. Meanwhile, Alleyn's celebrity painter wife Agatha Troy has just successfully launched her latest exhibition and, on a whim, takes a canal cruise on the MV Zodiac through 'Constable' country (East Anglia, as in John Constable RA, the old master, not the punning PC constable of the book's title). Her fellow passengers are, of course, the usual assorted bunch of suspects, when the inevitable murder takes place of Hazel Rickerby-Carrick, a needy, tiresome spinster whose diary is her "self-propelling journal" and who indiscreetly boasts of carrying around her neck a fabulous Fabergé, jewelled zodiac ornament, which is, of course missing. The passengers, a typical Marsh cast if suspects, include: a literary lepidopterist clearly much smitten by Troy, a pair of gushing American tourists in search of antiques, a sporting Australian clergyman, a London slum landlord with a talent for fine graphics and, finally, a grandly exotic and distinguished surgeon of Afro-European origin, to whom Troy is greatly attracted, and who is the subject of overt racism from several of the passengers. This last character belongs in a series of the author's sympathetically portrayed, grandly classy victims of racism in her novels (cf 'Vintage Murder', 'Colour Scheme', 'Black As He's Painted' and her final novel 'Light Thickens') and it's interesting how often Marsh makes Alleyn or Troy strongly attracted to them. The plot develops around a conspiracy to plant fake Constable paintings in the international art market, and, Alleyn arrives hot-foot to protect his wife, solve the crime, unmask and arrest 'The Jampot' Roderick Alleyn novels 1968 British novels Novels set in Norfolk Collins Crime Club books British detective novels {{1960s-crime-novel-stub