Dame Ngaio Marsh (whose first name is pronounced “NYE-oh), was born and grew up in New Zealand, and moved to England in the late 1920s. Bored and out of sorts on a wet weekend, she wrote A Man Lay Dead, first of the 32 novels featuring Inspector Alleyn of Scotland Yard; the series would eventually see her named one of England’s four “queens of crime” (alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Margery Allingham), and earn her a Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America, for her lifetime achievements in crime fiction.
Despite these accolades, Marsh’s true passion was for the theater (and many fans regard the “Alleyn” novels with theatrical settings as her best). In 1966, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to theater in New Zealand. Marsh died in 1982, leaving behind a passionate fan-base and the opening chapters of….Money In the Morgue.
Like Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy has been a celebrated actor and theatrical producer, as well as a playwright, but she is perhaps best known as a novelist, the author of five crime-novels featuring lesbian private-eye Saz Martin, and nine works of literary fiction. The youngest of seven children, Duffy spent her childhood in New Zealand, but moved to England as an adult; she now lives in London. In 2016 Duffy was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her services to the arts.