Edith Ngaio Marsh, b. 1899, Christchurch, New Zealand; d. 1982, Christchurch, New Zealand. Ngaio Marsh was the only child of well-educated parents who were amateur writers and actors, and she enrolled in the Canterbury University College of Art at the age of 15, hoping to be a painter. She changed her mind eventually and turned to writing, publishing many pieces in local newspapers; she eventually submitted a play to the manager of a touring Shakespeare company, who rejected the play but offered her a place as an actress. She toured Australia with the troupe for two years, and moved on to writing and producing for amateur theatrical groups in England. (While there she also co-founded an interior decorating shop.) Back in New Zealand when her mother became ill in the mid-30s, she remained there during World War II (driving a hospital bus) and worked in local drama societies until her father's death in 1949, when she returned to England.
Her writing had become her main source of income by this point. She wrote her first (unpublished) mystery in 1932 and her first novel, A Man Lay Dead was published in 1934. On her return to England, she developed a pattern of writing for six months of the year and living on the income during the other half while directing theater groups, which she considered to be her most important work. Her autobiography, Black Beech and Honeydew, published in 1965, barely mentions her career as a mystery writer and dwells on her family and theatrical experiences.
In the postwar years she became a well-known party-giver and entertainer in England and France, and moved in a rather glamorous set, although as far as is known she never became romantically involved with anyone, and certainly never married. She was a sort of patron for at least a few younger men, whom she brought to parties and supported for periods of time. She continued to divide her time between England and New Zealand until her death. She was made a Dame of the British Empire (the female equivalent of a knighthood) in 1966.
All her books have starred Chief Inspector (later Superintendent) Roderick Alleyn, of Scotland Yard. (She claimed never to have grown tired of him.) He is a suave, urbane and charming policeman who happens to be of aristocratic background; tall and lean, good-looking and scholarly, he invites comparison with Lord Peter Wimsey, but is rather more practical and modest. In Artists in Crime (1938), he meets his wife, Agatha Troy, who is a renowned portrait painter and (like Wimsey's wife Harriet) a, strong-minded and independent woman.
The archetypal Marsh plot is set in the world of the arts, particularly the theater or painters. She intentionally drew upon her own background and experiences for most of her plot settings, declaring that it not only made the writing more convincing but saved her a lot of research work. Her only collaboration (The Nursing Home Murder, written with a physician friend, Dr. Henry Jellett) grew from a serious illness and convalescence. She had great powers of characterization, and there is a component of psychological drama in the stories involving Alleyn's romance and marriage, but once a plot is underway, police procedure tends to take center stage, and the reader finds a novel of manners rather than one of character development. Her style is easy and elegant, and a pleasure to read; her depictions of the theatre, from opening nights to backstage intrigue, rank as some of her best writing.
What about her name? Most biographies and the jackets of many of her books say that the name Marsh used, Ngaio (pronounced ny-oh), means "flowering tree" in Maori, the aboriginal language of New Zealand; but she is quoted in her obituary as saying "What does 'Ngaio' mean? I don't know. Like many Maori words it has a number of meanings---clever, light on the water, a little bug---but I don't know which my parents had in mind."
[Read Ngaio Marsh's obituary in the New York Times here.]