Death in a White Tie
(1938)
Blurb:
My review:
Map of Marsdon House.
Curiously
reminiscent of Helen McCloy’s Dance of
Death, this sophisticated and amusing tale of unfashionable
blackmail in
fashionable society (i.e., wallowing in titles) ranks highly among the
early
Ngaio Marshes. The author shows good
management of the large cast of characters concerned in the murder by
suffocation of Lord Robert Gospell in the taxi on the way home from
Lady
Carados’s daughter’s coming-out party, and the inquiries into their
movements
are as carefully orchestrated as the steps of a dance.
Only the weak handling of the central clue,
the naming of which at too early a juncture allows the alert reader to
spot the
villain, thereby robbing the tense and logical climax of its impact,
keeps the
book from a place in the first rank.