Singing in the Shrouds
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 First edition | |
| Author | Ngaio Marsh |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Roderick Alleyn |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Collins Crime Club |
Publication date | 1959 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Off With His Head |
| Followed by | False Scent |
Singing in the Shrouds is a detective novel by New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh; it is the twentieth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1959. The plot concerns a serial killer who is on a voyage from London to South Africa.
New Zealand-born Ngaio Marsh travelled often between New Zealand and Europe or occasionally New Zealand and America or Japan.
Her novels draw upon her life experiences including her preference for travel by sea even after air travel was common. She always chose a small cargo ship with a limited number of passengers, rather than a big passenger liner.[1]
Marsh biographer Joanne Drayton[2] relates how the writer based the novel's Cape Farewell on a lengthy 1954 sea voyage she took aboard the Norwegian ship Temeraire, with a cargo of wool and 10 passengers, from Adelaide to Odessa, touching in Spain before its ultimate docking in Wales. As Drayton comments: 'The people on board and the ship itself became the material for Singing in the Shrouds '.
Marsh researched the psychopathic serial killer, a rare type in her novels. Two actual wartime cases clearly provide reference points for her plot - those of Gordon Cummins London's 'Blackout Ripper' and Eddie Leonski Melbourne's 'Brownout Killer'. The latter case shares common features with Marsh's fictional strangler, who 'says it with flowers' and sings as he kills or just after killing his victims: Leonski is recorded as having explained of the women he strangled that he wanted "to get at their voices".[citation needed]