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 as late as 1982.Marsh mentions in an introduction that she named her detective Alleyn after Alleyn's School, where her father had been a pupil.