Roderick Alleyn

Roderick Alleyn
First appearance	A Man Lay Dead
Last appearance	Light Thickens
Created by	Ngaio Marsh
Information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Police detective
Nationality	British

Roderick Alleyn is a fictional character who first appeared in 1934. He is the policeman hero of the 32 detective novels of Ngaio Marsh. Marsh and her gentleman detective belong firmly in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, although the last Alleyn novel, Light Thickens, was published in 1982.

Marsh mentions in an introduction that she named her detective Alleyn after the Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, founder of Dulwich College, where her father had been a pupil.

Roderick Alleyn (pronounced 'Allen') is a gentleman detective, whose family and educational background may be deduced from comments in the novels. In brief, Alleyn was apparently born around 1892-1894, graduated from Oxford around 1915, served in the army for three years in World War I, then spent a year (1919–1920) in the British Foreign Service. He finally joined the Metropolitan Police as a constable in about 1920 or 1921.

Marsh's 32 novels form a chronological series that follows Alleyn's detective career. When the series opens (A Man Lay Dead, 1934), Alleyn is aged about 40 and is already a Detective Chief-Inspector in the CID at Scotland Yard. As the series progresses, Alleyn marries and has a son, and eventually rises to the rank of Chief Superintendent.

Throughout the novels, Alleyn is clearly a member of the gentry. He is the younger brother of a baronet, and was raised in Buckinghamshire where his mother, Lady Alleyn, continued to live. Lady Alleyn is unseen until the sixth novel, Artists in Crime (1938). In Surfeit of Lampreys (1941) Alleyn states that his mother's maiden name was Blandish.

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