Tied Up in Tinsel

This late entry in the Roderick Alleyn series is that beloved classic set-up: isolated country house, complete with a Christmas house party, disappearance/murder ensues.
In this book Marsh executes a terrific send-up of that idea, with characters who are impossibly quirky and a rather delayed discovery of a body. All the gore and violence is kept neatly offstage, so the book is mostly a sophisticated cozy with a bit of police procedural thrown in.
I don’t know if Marsh was getting tired of Alleyn, but the book really comes to life when Troy is the lead and rather fades out when Alleyn comes on the scene. The minor characters are mostly over-the-top cartoons, but that’s part of the fun.
As to the solution: read the ending carefully. The show more motivation is clear and convincing, but there’s a little trick that has to be worked through.
This is an enjoyable read for a wintry afternoon—or a miserably hot summer day. Recommended to fans of Golden Age British mysteries. show less

Tided Up in Tinsel – Ngaio Marsh
audio performance by James Saxon

4 stars

English country house mysteries are such perennial favorites, but I imagine it’s a challenge for an author to continually keep up appearances. This country estate drama has the further challenge of being set in what must have been the 1960’s. And, hey, ho, it’s Christmas Eve.
The master of the house Hillary Bill-Tasman, having reacquired the ancestral home, is having his portrait painted. The artist is the well known Agatha Troy, who is also, conveniently, the wife of Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn. The house is full of eccentric guests, including the fiancée, Cressida, who sprinkles her speech with ‘groovy’ and ‘it sends me’. There’s Uncle show more ‘Flea’ and Aunt ‘Bed’, a gruff old Colonel and his wife who arrive with devoted manservant. All of the other servants are convicted, but paroled, murderers. What could be better?

On Christmas Eve there is a traditional and extravagant entertainment planned for the village children. Uncle Flea dresses up, not as Father Christmas, but as a Druid to distribute the presents. And, naturally, the unplanned part of the entertainment is a murder.

There is actually a bit of a clever puzzle involved in the solving of the mystery. But mostly this is a spoof. It was fun. James Saxon gave just the right touch to the ridiculous characters to make them silly without being stupid. show less

After really enjoying 'Scales Of Justice', I found myself a little disappointed in 'Tied Up In Tinsel'. It was a mildly entertaining Christmas mystery that started well as a sort of brightly-lit pantomime peopled with characters so eccentric but so recognisable that they could be straight from Comedia Del Arte or a British sixties sitcom. It spiralled down into a pedestrian investigation once Alleyn arrived and rather fizzled out.

I particularly regretted that, having been centre stage for the first half of the book, Troy Alleyn, Roderick Alleyn's wife becomes a shadow in the background once her husband arrives. I know that this is probably realistic but nothing else about this deliberately larger-than-life book is realistic, so show more insisting on realism here seems such a waste.

I had great hopes of the conceit of the novel: a murder at Christmas, at an elaborate Druidical/Christian hybrid pageant, in a snowed-in Country House where all the servants are convicted murderers. Initially, the book lived up to its promise providing an extraordinarily colourful cast with host, guests and servants all having bizarre characteristics, histories and mannerisms. I think they shone particularly brightly through Troy Alleyn's empathetic eyes. The start of the book was also filled with good-humoured, pantomime style humour that worked quite well.

The book took a dive once Alleyn was dragged in to investigate the disappearance of a member of the household who is feared to be dead. I found Alleyn to be dull. I also hadn't realised just how much upper-class entitlement he wraps around himself while setting out to be 'firm but fair' and 'good with the chaps'.

I thought the mystery was a little too transparent, based as it was on one false assumption, so I found myself waiting for Alleyn to figure out how to prove the culprit did it. The mechanism for doing that, when it finally arrived, was implausible and rather lazy.

The novel felt old-fashioned for something published in 1971. It was filled with a previous generation's stereotypes but then, most of the participants were quite old.

James Saxon's narration was a bit variable. He got some of the characters voices perfectly and managed the humour very well but he couldn't cope with the young female lead's use of 'You know' as verbal padding. It sounded like he'd never heard the phrase used that way and so he made it sound rather odd. I also got the impression that he didn't trust the text outside of the dialogue and rather rushed it in parts. His, often plummy, narration probably contributed to my impression of the book as old-fashioned.

Click on the SoundCloud link below to hear a sample of James Saxon's work.


https://soundcloud.com/hachetteaudiouk/tied-up-in-tinsel-by-ngaio-marsh-soundclo... show less

Summary: Hilary Bill-Talsman is the subject of a Troy portrait and host of a Christmas house party that includes a Druid Pageant, marred when the chief Druid disappears. Alleyn arrives from overseas just in time to solve the mystery.

Hilary Bill-Talsman, an entrepreneur and nouveaux riche is rehabilitating an old manor house, Halberds, to which Troy has been invited to paint his portrait, and if he can persuade her, his fiancée, Cressida Tottenham. The holidays are approaching, Alleyn is away on assignment, and Hilary has persuaded Troy to stay for the Christmas pageant on a Druid theme, along with his house guests, Colonel Fleaton Forrester, Hilary’s uncle and his wife, along with their “man” Moult, formerly under the Colonel’s show more command, Bert Smith, an expert on antiques, and the aforementioned Cressida.

It’s an interesting lot, to be sure, but even more interesting is the household staff, all former murderers who have done their time. Staffing a manor house in the 1970’s, when this is set, is difficult. Hilary covers this with his social experiment. Particularly disturbing is Nigel, whose mental state is questionable, seeing “sinners” behind every bush, as it were. Yet the house seems to run smoothly, they get along and the only conflicts are between them and Moult, who has a streak of unpleasantness mixed with being prone to excess, and Cressida, who is averse to Cooke the cook’s cats.

Colonel Forrester is set to play the chief Druid, the counterpart of Father Christmas, whose appearance with gifts is the climax of the pageant. But he has a propensity for spells, and worked up as he is, he succumbs to one. Unbeknownst to everyone except for Cressida who helps him with his costume, Moult takes his place and pulls it off. Only after helping him remove the beard in a cloakroom, does Cressida inform Mrs. Forrester of the Colonel’s indisposition. Only afterwards do they notice that Moult has disappeared. A search of the house and grounds is made but he is nowhere to be found.

It’s at this juncture that Alleyn, having finished up an overseas assignment early, turns up, advises contacting the authorities, and stays on to help with the investigation. It turns into a murder investigation, when he spots four of the house staff moving a large box in the middle of the night, a box that contains Moult’s body. Yet despite the protests of the guests, Alleyn is not inclined to suspect the former murderers.

Marsh is a master of the “murder at a house party” genre but I have to admit that this one wasn’t my favorite. It takes half the book to get to the murder, a lot of stage setting, a series of malicious messages and pranks intended to incriminate one or more of the staff. And the identity of the murderer did not come as a surprise, only the motive. At the same time, the setting of the mood during Troy’s walk in the country and the later search during the storm, the description of the pageant, and the fascinating character of Hilary were all masterfully done.

This was one of two Marsh novels to be nominated for an Edgar Award, the other being Killer Dolphin. I’m not sure I understand the nomination of this book, which I did not find nearly as well-written as Killer Dolphin or some of her other works. It may just have been the year. show less

I enjoyed this solid country house whodunit murder mystery. Almost half of the story is devoted to setting the stage for the puzzle presented to Chief Superintendent Alleyne when he comes on the scene. The body of the murder victim is missing until the closing chapters of the story.

The English country house is full of the usual eccentrics who regularly appear in these mystery stories. In this one, there's a contingent of convicted murderers who have served their sentences and been released from prison. For local colour atmosphere, beside the old house situated next to the moors, there's a neighbouring prison.

With the assistance of the local police Inspector Alleyne undertakes his investigation, and is belatedly joined by his trusty show more sidekick Inspector Fox. The identity of the killer is revealed in the very last chapter, at which point this reader learned he had been taken in by the author's masterful misdirection.

A good, but sometimes uneven, read. show less

A fun cozy mystery. Imagine a mystery taking place in a home where all the servants are convicted murderers. Quite a change from your usual Golden Age mystery. Nice to read something lighter after Ink Black Heart. Wanda McCaddon is a wonderful narrator.

Alleyn meets the 70s! Troy Alleyn features more in the later cases (for which I am glad as she's one of my favourite characters) and somewhat like Joyce Barnaby, seems to attract murder wherever she goes. In this case she's commissioned to paint the portrait of a wealthy antiques dealer and becomes embroiled in a tricky domestic situation with blimpish elders, a cockney wheeler dealer, a 70s glamour girl fiance and a domestic staff consisting entirely of murderers! Alleyn is overseas and returns in the nick of time to solve the mystery of the disappearing manservant. Not a dissimilar mise en scheme to Final Curtin but still worth the read!