Ngaio Marsh: Tied Up in Tinsel

16 Tasks of the Festive Season: Square 15 – Boxing Day


Book themes for Boxing Day/St. Stephen’s Day: Read anything where the main character has servants (paid servants count, NOT unpaid) or is working as a servant him-/ herself.

Well, I guess one could count Roderick Alleyn as a public servant, seeing as he’s a policeman, but the actual pièce de résistance in this book are the servants at the North Country estate where his wife Troy is staying for Christmas (having been commissioned to paint the owner’s portrait) — because they are, every man jack of them, murderers.  Or, well, at least homicides, whose sentences were commuted to something less than the gallows or life in prison because they had some pretty convincing “provocation” for their deeds, or who were let out early because of a successful appeal.  So of course, when their employer’s Christmas party ends up with the disappearance of the manservant of an elderly guest couple (who is soon suspected to have been killed, even though nobody can find his corpse, either), they duly consider themselves in more than a bit of a pickle: all the more so as, in the days preceding the death, a number of pranks of questionable taste have occurred, each one of which seems to mirror the particular circumstances or modus operandi of one of their bloody deeds. — And it doesn’t make one iota of a difference that Mr. Alleyn, originally having arrived from London to keep his wife company and escort her back home, but soon enough (and very unwillingly) put in charge of the case, assures them that suspicion does not lie their way solely because of their past history.

This was a revisit of a favorite Golden Age mystery, courtesy of James Saxon’s audio narration, which I enjoyed very much.

 

Original post:
ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1626585/post

One thought on “Ngaio Marsh: Tied Up in Tinsel”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Literature Reviews Uncategorized

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit – Performed by Andy Serkis

Like its magnificent sequel, The Hobbit is, I think, many things to many people: the first exposition of the universe that would become Middle-earth; prelude to The Lord of the Rings; a bite-sized visit to Middle-earth whenever you don’t feel up to the full blow of the War of the Ring(s); one of the most […]

Read More
Literature Reviews

Karen Wynn Fonstad: The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth

Blurb: “Find your way through every part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s great creation, from the Middle-earth of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to the undying lands of the West … The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-earth is an essential guide to the geography of Middle-earth, from its founding in the Elder Days – as […]

Read More
Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings – Performed by Andy Serkis

In another online community, we recently talked about the new Andy Serkis Lord of the Rings recordings.  Well, it turns out that the pull of The Ring is still mighty strong, for however much it may have been destroyed in Mount Doom. I had barely gotten my hands on these audios and I found I […]

Read More