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Z.J. Czupor has joined us TWICE to discuss Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers and Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh.
His new murder mystery, Dead Men Don’t Drink, is published at zoltanjames.substack.com. He’s also the author of THE BIG WEIRD: Haikus in Times of Pandemic and Chaos. He is immediate past president of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and an active member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers.
History of Mystery book selections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
He is also the author of THE BIG WEIRD: Haikus in Times of Pandemic and Chaos, a collection of sublime poetry about his observations of the pandemic. More of his haiku poems are featured in Stop the World: Snapshots from a Pandemic, (Thalia Press), which includes authors, poets and essayists from around the world.
His noir short story, The Man in the Corner, is featured in Crossing Colfax, by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.

4. The Victim: Flossie as Power, Personality, and Provocation
Flossie is no shrinking-violet. How does Ngaio Marsh make her presence linger after she’s gone—through portraiture, reputation, household dynamics, and the aftershocks of her control?
Flossie: Heroic public servant or unbearable authoritarian benefactor? What does the book seem to want us to feel about women who take up space publicly?

Why would someone want Flossie dead? Rank the motive categories: personal resentment, romantic rivalry, political threat, ideological conflict, or something colder.
5. Class, Gratitude, and the “Patron” Problem
There’s a recurring tension around patronage—who is “helping” whom, and what that help costs. What does the book say about gratitude as a weapon?
When a benefactor decides they’re entitled to your future, is that kindness or coercion? Where do you see the book landing?
Several characters in Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh feel trapped by the role they’re assigned in the household hierarchy. Who seems most conscious of class—and who uses it as a shield?
6. Character Web: Relationships, Pressure, and Emotional Truth
Let’s talk characters. Who in this book is most capable of self-deception? Who is most brutally honest? Which characters behaved like adults under wartime pressure, and which behaved like sulky adolescents?
Which relationships felt most combustible—and which felt most quietly sad?
The idiom suggests fixedness—being set in your nature.Who is most “dyed in the wool” here: the victim, the killer, the ideologue, the loyalist, the snob, the romantic?
7. Clues & Craft: Fair Play, Objects, and Alibis in Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh
The musical alibi: fair, clever, or too cute? Did you enjoy the technicality of it—or did it feel like a trick you’re meant to swallow?

What is Ngaio Marsh’s misdirection style here? Is it “hide the clue,” “hide the significance,” or “let you see everything but look the other way”? Which clues felt most “classic puzzle,” and which felt most psychologically revealing?
Beyond shock value, what does the wool-bale concealment accomplish? Is it about industry, identity, compression of truth, the station’s economy, the idea of being packaged and exported? Does the method feel symbolically New Zealand or gimmicky?)

The final trap: thrilling theatre or ethically dicey? Where do you land on detectives who lure the killer into action to prove a case?

Fair play court: Did the solution feel genuinely inevitable in hindsight or mostly “authorial magician’s flourish”?
Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction

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DIED IN THE WOOL (1945) by Ngaio Marsh is a set in the remote New Zealand countryside on a sheep farm during World War II. The story follows Inspector Roderick Alleyn as he investigates the suspicious death of a politician while conducting counter-espionage work.
The book is known for its blend of murder mystery and wartime espionage. Marsh’s vivid characterization and clever narrative structure make it a compelling and timeless entry in the genre. She was one of the Queens of Crime, and this novel is among her best.
History of Mystery book selections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Z.J. Czupor has joined us TWICE to discuss Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers and Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh.
His new murder mystery, Dead Men Don’t Drink, is published at zoltanjames.substack.com. He’s also the author of THE BIG WEIRD: Haikus in Times of Pandemic and Chaos. He is immediate past president of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and an active member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. He’s represented by Terrie Wolf (AKA Literary Management).
Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh
1. The Hook & the Vibe in Died in the Wool by Ngaio Marsh

Opening image: a missing public figure turns up inside a wool bale. Did that seem instantly macabre, instantly weird, instantly kind of funny? What was your initial response?

Ngaio Marsh is doing “Golden Age puzzle” in a distinctly New Zealand landscape during wartime. Did that feel like a refreshing shift from the usual manor-house geometry, or did it still read as country-house logic in different clothes and during bleak times?
BiblioPub
The cozy reader’s refuge that Roanoke has always needed.

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On Fire and Under Water is a new crime fiction anthology from Rock and a Hard Place Press. The anthology explores the intersection of climate change and crime through the lens of 15 short stories from some of today’s best crime fiction writers.
Edited by Anthony Award-winning author Curtis Ippolito and the editorial team at RHP Press, the stories peel back the curtain on the ways in which climate change impacts real people in their most desperate hour.
Get your copy of our guest's books here! 
History of Mystery book slections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
“The Devil Doesn’t Live Hand to Mouth” is a short story in the anthology by Puja Guha. Mozambique has been hit hard by Cyclone Jasper. Antonio’s Bahia Mar Sanctuary, a boutique resort/coastal B&B, has been destroyed. But he has another option. A Chinese spy, Ernest Mao, has asked Antonio to place a few bugs in the home of the uber-wealthy Fred and Gina.
His dream is dead. His resort is gone. He drives a 10-year-old Toyota Corolla. Everything about Fred and Gina is a reminder of what he will never have. Antonio grapples with his decision – what should he do?
“Long Night of the Polar Bear” by C.E. McKenna takes place in Longyearbyen, a small coal-mining town on Spitsbergen Island, in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Svalbard is between Norway and the North Pole. Atle Solas has been banished by his boss, Vlad, to Svalbard for accidentally killing an old woman during a job. He has a plan for escape: before heading to Svalbard, he had copied the contents of his boss’ daughter’s laptop onto a thumb drive. He has stored the thumb drive in a small cavern carved into the back of the leg of a dancing polar bear in the bar. His plan is to collect €2 million for the contents and retire in Thailand.
“No one is allowed to be born on Svalbard and the dead are shipped immediately to be buried off-island. This place is a land of living, but not life, of dying, but not death.”
C.E. McKenna is a writer and historian from Colorado. She has history theses in the libraries of Reed College and Oklahoma State, and her short stories have found awards and publication with Writing by Writers, Desperate Literature, Cagibi, Lumina, Quarterly West, Northwest Review, and Shift. In 2022, she completed AWP’s 17th Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, and in 2024 was invited to the Chateau d’Orquevaux for a 4-week writing residency. She is currently an MFA student at Emerson College with an expected graduation of 2026.
Most of C.E. McKenna’s work focuses on the untold stories of the American West. Her short fiction and research often deals with the dangers of western environments—particularly wildland fire. Her long-form work combines deft historical research with speculative fiction, resulting in vivid, thrilling pageturners. Her debut novel, The Primary Source, is about the murderous origins of Stanford University.
C.E. McKenna lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she works as a software developer and spends her free time traipsing local hiking trails, attempting to avoid moose.
Tea, Tonic & Toxin interviews Raymond J. Brash, who discusses his short story “Ban Yuh Belly,” published in On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology. He’s joined by authors Curtis Ipppolito, Puja Guha, and C.E. McKenna.
He’s is a Trinidadian-American writer residing in Colorado with his wife and rescue pittie, Bessie.
He enjoys reading and writing speculative fiction, noir, and anything that crushes multiple genres into a pulpy, edible mash.
Raymond has stories published or forthcoming in The Lines We Cross: Bouchercon 2026 Anthology, On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, Shotgun Honey, Rock and a Hard Place Press, and others, and has been nominated for a Best of the Net Award. Follow him on Instagram @raymond.j.brash, Bluesky @rjbrash.bsky.social, or visit his website raymondjbrash.work
“Ban Yuh Belly” is a short story by Raymond J. Brash published in the anthology. “Ban yuh belly” is Caribbean patios meaning “brace yourself and prepare for hard times. The story is set in Trinidad and Tobago. “Rainy season getting worse and worse by the year,” Jeffrey Perrera says. “And they say God is a Trini.”
Jeffrey finds bodies washed up on the shore and takes their money. When we first meet him, he has also taken a watch. Jeffrey tells us, “I don’t read names on cards or stare at pictures too much. It’s easier that way.” Jeffrey is trying to do right by his sister, Denise, and her daughter, Hazel. Denise’s sound and look remind him of Mumzie, their mother.
Curtis Ippolito is an Anthony Award-and Derringer Award-winning writer. He is the author of Burying the Newspaper Man and the newly published Waves of Burden.
His short stories have appeared in many prominent publications and have been featured in several anthologies. He lives in San Diego and is a member of Mystery Writers of America and serves as vice-president of the San Diego chapter of Sisters in Crime.
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DEATH COMES AS THE END by Agatha Christie is a groundbreaking historical mystery set in ancient Egypt. When a wealthy patriarch’s death sparks a series of murders within his family, suspicion and secrets abound. It’s the first full-length historical whodunit.
History of Mystery book selections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Dr. Nicky Nielsen is a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. Originally from Denmark, he was awarded an AHRC Block Grant to undertake PhD research at the University of Liverpool, investigating subsistence strategies and craft production at the Ramesside fortress site of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham. He obtained his PhD in 2016.
Get your copy of our guest's books here!
Read his article Agatha Christie: World’s First Historical Whodunnit Was Inspired by 4,000 Year‑Old Letters

Author’s Note on Death Comes as the End

“The action of this book takes place on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes in Egypt about 2000 B.C. Both places and time are incidental to the story. Any other place at any other time would have served as well, but it so happened that the inspiration of both characters and plot was derived from two or three Egyptian letters of the XIth Dynasty, found during the 1920-1921 season by the Egyptian Expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in a rock tomb opposite Luxor, and translated by Professor Battiscombe Gunn in the Museum’s Bulletin.
“It may be of interest to the reader to note that an endowment for ka-service–an everyday feature of ancient Egyptian civilization–was very similar in principle to a medieval chantry bequest. Property was bequeathed to the ka-priest, in return for which he was expected to maintain the tomb of the testator, and to provide offerings at the tomb on certain feast days throughout the year for the repose of the deceased’s soul.
“The terms ‘Brother,’ ‘Sister,’ in Egyptian text regularly meaning ‘Lover,’ are frequently interchangeable with ‘Husband,’ ‘Wife.’ They are so used on occasion in this book.
“The agricultural calendar of Ancient Egypt, consisting of three seasons of four months of thirty days, formed the background of peasant life, and with the addition of five intercalary days at the end of the year, was used as the official calendar of 365 days to the year. This ‘year’ originally began with the arrival in Egypt of the flood-water of the Nile in the third week of July by our reckoning. The absence of a leap year caused this to lag through the centuries, so that at the opening of the agricultural year, i.e. in January instead of July. To save the reader from continually having to make allowance for this six months, however, the dates here used as chapter headings are calculated by the agricultural year of the time, i.e., Inundation–late July to late November; Winter–late November to late March; and Summer–late March to late July.”

Characters in Death Comes as the End
Imhotep, a mortuary priest (ka-priest); fussily pompous; provider for his large household
Nofret, Imhotep’s beautiful young concubine, newly arrived from the north
Esa, Imhotep’s mother; blunt-spoken, disdainful of much of her family; she calls her son a fool
Renisenb (ren-eh-seb), Imhotep’s recently widowed daughter (husband Khay); mother of Teti
Yahmose, Imhotep’s eldest son; he’s kind and hesitant, rarely asserting his rights as eldest son
Satipy (sah-tee-pee), Yahmose’s wife; tall, energetic, loud woman who bullied her husband
Sobek, Imhotep’s second son; handsome braggart who resents his dependent status
Kait, Sobek’s wife; her love for her children dominated her every word and act
Ipy (ee-pee), Imhotep’s youngest son; only his father could tolerate his adolescent arrogance
Henet, obsequious, malicious family retainer, poor relation of Ashayet, Imhotep’s dead wife
Hori, Imhotep’s family’s scribe and man of business; he is in love with Renisenb
Kameni, a handsome scribe and kinsman from the North; he sings songs of love for Renisenb
Crippen and Landru
The very best in short mystery fiction

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Support the show
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DEATH COMES AS THE END by Agatha Christie is a groundbreaking historical mystery set in ancient Egypt. When a wealthy patriarch’s death sparks a series of murders within his family, suspicion and secrets abound. It’s the first full-length historical whodunit.
Get your copy of our guest's books here! 
History of Mystery book slections available in our Amazon Storefront or support your favorite local bookstore in our Bookshop Storefront as well! Guests have their own list here!
Or if you happen to be in lovely Roanoke, Virginia, stop in person at the BiblioPub to get your copy.
Watch clips from our conversations with guests!
For bonus episodes, video conversations, and to get all episodes first, join our Patreon community.
Dr. Nicky Nielsen is a Senior Lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Manchester. Originally from Denmark, he was awarded an AHRC Block Grant to undertake PhD research at the University of Liverpool, investigating subsistence strategies and craft production at the Ramesside fortress site of Zawiyet Umm el-Rakham. He obtained his PhD in 2016.
Nicky Nielsen has excavated in Europe, Turkey and Egypt, and he is currently the field director of the University of Liverpool Tell Nabasha Survey Project, which conducts archaeological investigations of the ancient city of Imet located in the north-eastern Nile Delta.
He has published several peer-reviewed papers, as well as more public-oriented articles, and he is the author of ‘Pharaoh Seti I’ (2018), ‘From Mummies to Microchips’ (2020, co-authored with Professor Joyce Tyldesley) and ‘Egyptomaniacs: How We Became Obsessed with Ancient Egypt’ (2020).
Read his article Agatha Christie: World’s First Historical Whodunnit Was Inspired by 4,000 Year‑Old Letters
In Death Comes as the End by Agatha Christie (1944), the Queen of Mystery transports us to ancient Egypt. In 2000 BC, death gives meaning to life. At the foot of a cliff lies the body of Nofret, concubine to a ka-priest. Many see it as fate—the beautiful, venomous young woman deserved to die.
But the priest’s daughter suspects foul play and believes the evil-doer lurks within their household—and watches helplessly as the family’s passions explode in murder.
The novel reflects Christie’s fascination with the ancient world, inspired by her time in the Middle East with her archaeologist husband, Sir Max Mallowan. It’s the first full-length novel to merge historical fiction with the mystery genre, paving the way for the historical whodunit.

BiblioPub
The cozy reader’s refuge that Roanoke has always needed.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

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