| Tied Up in Tinsel | |
| Author: | Ngaio Marsh |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Roderick Alleyn |
| Genre: | Detective fiction |
| Publisher: | Collins Crime Club |
| Release Date: | 1972 |
| Media Type: | |
| Preceded By: | When in Rome |
| Followed By: | Black As He's Painted |
Tied Up in Tinsel is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh; it is the twenty-seventh novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1972.[1] The novel takes place at a country house in England over the course of a few days during the Christmas season.
Marsh scholar Kathryne Slate McDorman compares the wintry English setting to that of Marsh's Death and the Dancing Footman, and (although the locale of Tied Up in Tinsel is not specified) suggests that the action takes place in Dorset, as in the earlier book.
According to her biographer Margaret Lewis, Marsh "had never spent Christmas in an ordinary English household, and her view of the practical side of preparing traditional dishes was very hazy"; she did not realise "that Christmas puddings are made weeks before the event, and sit maturing darkly in their bowls ready for lengthy boiling on the day" until her publishers pointed this out. At their suggestion, she replaced the ritual of stirring a pudding and making a wish with biting into a mince pie. Lewis comments that the entertainment Hillary stages for the local families is "an elaborate version of Ngaio's own Christmas parties": "Every Christmas she entertained the children of her friends to an elaborate 'Christmas Tree Party' when she tried to create the atmosphere of an English country house with church bells and carols echoing out into the hot Christchurch summer. She gave lavish presents to all her guests".
Edmund Crispin wrote a mixed review for The Sunday Times: "the killer’s identity comes as a nice surprise, and the writing flows as gracefully as ever. Indeterminacy of mood, however, combines with the implausibility of the domestic set-up to leave a slight but definite feeling of ungrateful dissatisfaction."[2] Despite Crispin’s review, The Sunday Times listed the book in an end-of-year "selection of the year’s outstanding titles".[3]
Maurice Richardson wrote in The Observer, "One of her more fantastic house-party whodunits... She doesn’t seem to have lost much of her zest."[4] Matthew Coady in The Guardian was more mixed: "Agreeably effortless telling compensates for mystery’s dullness."[5] H.R.F. Keating concluded a capsule review for The Times, "Buy every copy and, come December, give all your uncles a Marsh for Mistletide."[6]
The New York Times reviewer called the ex-convict servants "so flagrantly suspect that no reader out of the cradle will believe in their guilt", but added, "I must say that Dame Ngaio had me honestly fooled as to the true murderer and to the way it was done. The solution though was no trouble to Roderick Alleyn, one of the house guests, who proves once again to be a handy man to have around when things get gory."[7]
Kathryne Slate McDorman compares the character of Cressida to another seductress, Madame Lisse in Death and the Dancing Footman: "Marsh seemed to enjoy these characters: they are not automatically condemned to being loathsome, unlike their male counterparts". She compares Hilary Bill-Tasman to Percival Pyke Period in Hand in Glove, "the other great snob Marsh created". McDorman sees social satire in the red herring of the servants: "When a murder occurs on the premises... it is easy for all the house guests to conclude immediately that one of the staff has again gratified a blood lust. Respectable upper-class English folk do not accept that one of their own could commit a heinous crime, especially if there are servants on whom to fix the blame - and Bill-Tasman's are completely vulnerable to such a charge. The murder, it turns out, hinges not on Bill-Tasman's 'social experiment' with murderers but on his social arrogance... Although innocent of the crime, Bill-Tasman, like Percival Pyke Period, contributes to the possibilities for wrongdoing by his single-minded, narrow standard for evaluating worth in others, and ultimately in himself."
Marsh's biographer Margaret Lewis is not impressed by Tied Up in Tinsel: "The novel is very dated, and hopelessly old-fashioned... a return to the classic thirties style with little to recommend it... Little, Brown were happy to publish, however, and American readers enjoyed its quaint atmosphere. The difference between the fiction arising from direct and recent experience such as Clutch of Constables and When in Rome and those that depended on out-of-date memories was becoming very apparent."