A Gilded Death

Fashion, manners, family, and money all wrapped in issues of social class, suffrage protests, regional differences, and cocktail recipes! Who knew summer rituals in old Newport cottages with the famous and wealthy could spark such heady and deadly stuff?! A wealth of history in a cool mixed drink of satisfying mystery.

Cecelia Tichi’s mystery A Gilded Death shows that she is a brilliant practitioner of combining history as well as writing a compelling mystery. She takes a mining camp girl whose father strikes it rich and takes her off to New York high society–think “The Four Hundred,”–via her marriage to the scion of a welathy family. She has had to learn which fork to use, which gloves to wear when, and other such societal requirements in the upper crust of America’s Gilded Age. This story is set chiefly in Newport RI. where the “rich and famous and the more rich and more famous” had their “summer cottages.” Some cottages! 40 room mansions on the coast at Newport! Tichi combines her mystery with a fair amount of high society mores and morals, in some respects not terribly different from what one imagines they must still be, but I certainly wouldn’t know. since I don’t move in those circles. The contrast between the sleuth–the young mining camp woman who married so well–and her best friend, who tries to keep her straight on which fork to use, is probably pretty accurate as it would have been IRL, as my granddaughters say instead of In Real Life. Tichi is clearly thoroughly grounded in the times and moves through the historical landscape easily. This is a delightful read and is a clever contrast to the typical “British cozy mystery.” Tichi has given an American version now!

Very much looking forward to the next adventures of the DeVeres!!