Death in Ecstasy cover art

Death in Ecstasy

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Death in Ecstasy

By: Ngaio Marsh
Narrated by: James Saxon
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

The poison was cyanide, slipped into the sacred wine of ecstasy just before it was presented to Miss Cara Quayne at the House of the Sacred Flame.

The victim was a deeply religious initiate who had trained for a month for her last ceremony. She was also a very beautiful woman.... The suspects were the other initiates and the high priest. All claimed they were above earthly passions. But Cara Quayne had provoked lust, jealousy - and murder.

Roderick Alleyn suspected that more evil still lurked behind the Sign of the Sacred Flame....

©1936 Original Text of 1936 by Ngaio Marsh (P)2015 Hachette Audio Cosy Crime Thrillers Fiction Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives Thriller Crime Detective

Listeners also enjoyed...

 A Man Lay Dead cover art
Inspector Alan Grant: The Full Collection cover art
The Ngaio Marsh BBC Radio Collection cover art
The Crime at Black Dudley cover art
Death of an Author cover art
The Wintringham Mystery cover art
The White Cottage Mystery cover art
The Theft of the Iron Dogs cover art
The White Priory Murders cover art
Footsteps in the Dark cover art
The Affair of the Thirty Nine-Cufflinks cover art
Two-Way Murder cover art
These Names Make Clues cover art
A Hundred Thousand Dragons cover art
Paul Temple Intervenes cover art
Wicked Spirits: Mysteries, Spine Chillers and Lost Tales of the Supernatural cover art

Critic reviews

"A novelist of glittering accomplishment." ( Sunday Times)
"She writes better than Christie!" ( New York Times)
All stars
Most relevant  
The story’s grip came about half way through, until then it was a candidate for stopping the recording. Pleased I persevered.

The ingenuity of the author.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoy the Alleyn stories but enjoyed this less through the irritating narration. It gave impression that the narrator was not taking it seriously. Too many characters were caricatures and several sounded more like Julian and Sandy from Round The Horne than real people.

Spoiled by the strange voices used by the narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I enjoy most of Ngaio Marsh's books, and as far as plot-lines go, this one doesn't disappoint. It's atmospheric, ingenious and well written. However - a warning: It does contain attitudes to homosexuality which are offensive but which were, alas, common to the times in which it was written.

Enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Alleyn is in nearly every scene - unlike some of the later books in the series. One of Ngaio Marsh's best so far. On a technical point: not sure if it was due to listening while unable to sleep but I had to tweak the listening speed down slightly in the latter part of the book - worked a treat.

For Alleyn Fans ...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The kind of crime that we’re used to from old-fashioned Holmes and detectives who play their part. The characters are a little cartoon-like and the accents are way too stereotypical but so what? I enjoyed listening to it.

Old-fashioned, light-hearted sleuthing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I found this book entertaining and catching, although a bit problematic here and there, with numerous homophobic remarks.

Nice but a bit problematic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Good story ruined by an over-the-top narrator. He read the book like it was one long farce. I know that the author was not always politically correct, but I felt the narrator could have tempered this by his performance, but instead, I felt he was poking fun at the characters and, ergo, belittling the author's writing. It was really off-putting.

Good plot ruined by an awful narrator

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have always enjoyed reading Nagio Marsh previously. Found D in C thin and uninteresting. Maybe th effect of listening rather than reading!

Bored

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I have enjoyed reading Ngaio Marsh for many years. This is an excellent interpretation of yhe story.

Excellent book, well read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.