Book Note: Ngaio Marsh, Tied Up In Tinsel

This is book 27 of the "Roderick Alleyn" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Another mystery writer with a long career. Like Rex Stout's Nero Wolf books, it doesn't seem that time moves as fast in the fictional world as it does in the real world. This book, about a Christmas house party, seems like it could just as well be pre-war as in 1972.

It's also croggling to think of her career having overlapped Dorothy Sayers' at the start, but extending this far towards the present. Then again "1972" feels like the present, but it's more than 30 years ago — which is very close to the distance between Dorothy Sayers and 1972.

This is another house-party full of eccentrics, including a staff consisting entirely of paroled murderers (only the one-timers, of course). The servant of one of the guests (not a criminal) has dissappeared. I'm well over half way through, and we still don't really know he's dead.

I'm 7/8 of the way through, and while a guy is missing, there's no clear evidence of a murder yet. There won't be much time to resolve the crime, once it's been made apparent.

Well, the obvious guy was in fact murdered, and an unobvious murderer was almost wrapped up as soon as they had a body. Nice structure, actually. Most of the detection was done before the crime was clearly proved.