Deb reviewed this not long
ago, so I don’t intend to say much about the setup.

In the books prior to this one, Marsh had begun to introduce Inspector Alleyn
very late in the story; in one case, his role didn’t amount to much more
than a cameo. She reverses the trend here, introducing Alleyn right at
the beginning, but with a twist: the murder is about a year old, and
the trail is consequently muddled.

The murder took place on a remote New Zealand sheep
station. Alleyn arrives there as the book opens, and spends the first
half of the book listening to the four primary suspects as each one tells
his or her story in detail while the others heckle. We gain a lot of
information about what happened once upon a time, but there’s next to no
action in the present. Part of the fun of a mystery novel is following
the sleuth around as he chases down blind alleys, and Alleyn remains
firmly planted in a chair for far too long.

Bottom line: Marsh gets points for invention, but loses them again for
tedium.