As when a rookie is placed on the starting roster of a championship team, the introduction of a new detective to the ”Mystery!” lineup is cause for some concern.
I`m pleased to report that Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard makes a fine, typically quirky-bright addition to this series` crime-solving crew.
In ”Artists in Crime” (8 p.m. Thursday and Jan. 23 on PBS-Ch. 11), he investigates the death of a famous society painter.
It appears to be a suicide, but the painter`s life is littered with suspicious artists, many of whom are part of a country artists` colony run by Agatha Troy (Belinda Lang).
What a crowd: a male illustrator who dresses in women`s clothes, an aristocrat with a social-climbing fiance, a chain-smoking lesbian and a bearded parasite who`s fond of smoking opium. There`s also a seductive model with a gift for blackmail.
When the model is bumped off in front of the entire art gang, Alleyn moves to the country for a full-scale, ”unpleasant” investigation.
There are snatches of nudity, great character names (Wolf Garcia, Valmai Seacliff, Basil Pilgrim, Sonia Gluck), an attraction between Alleyn and Troy, and a satisfactorily complex story.
With his trusted, crusty aide, Inspector Fox (William Simon), Alleyn gets to the bottom of the murder, behaving as weirdly, in his way, as the outre artists.
Alleyn was created in 1931 by New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh in ”A Man Lay Dead,” and appeared in more than 30 subsequent mysteries. ”Artists in Crime,” written in 1938, has been carefully adapted by T.R. Bowen.
Alleyn is tall, dark and handsome. His blood is blue. His suits are Saville Row. He had, according to his mother, Lady Alleyn (Ursula Howells),
”a very bad” World War I and suffered a nervous breakdown after returning to England. He is still given to fits of great depression that force him into ”complete withdrawal.”
”I sink into inertia,” he says. He also, like ”Mystery!” stalwart Inspector Morse, freaks out at the sight of a corpse.
Played by Simon Williams, best known as James Bellamy in ”Upstairs, Downstairs,” Alleyn is a fragile man in a ferocious business. Explaining his crime-solving talents, he modestly says: ”I notice people. I`m trained to. That`s all.”
Hardly. There`s a great deal more to this ”Mystery!” rookie.
