This book was much better than the last Margery Allingham which I read. It’s the first book which she wrote featuring Albert Campion as a character, and it really annoys me that she has written him with a ‘silly falsetto voice.’ There’s nothing more guaranteed to put you off a man, so I try to pretend that she didn’t write that.
This is the well-loved country house weekend sort of crime thriller/ adventure story and I’m not going to say much more about it other than that I really enjoyed it. I know that at least one other blogger (Danielle) has it on her nightstand waiting to be read.
There is an engaged couple in this book and at one point the man decided that he wouldn’t allow his fiancee to participate in the action on the grounds that it would be dangerous. It just about had me bouncing my head off the wall, but the book was written in 1929 and to be honest, men got off with behaving like that a lot more recently too.
Apparently she wrote Campion as a parody of Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey. I wonder how well that went down with Sayers? They lived very close to each other in Essex in the 1930s. Sayers in Witham and Allingham was near White Notley, with just one train station in between them.
They were well known to the station staff and would often be on the same train going to nearby London, but according to one biography which I read years ago they didn’t pay much attention to each other.
In the 1970s I lived in Braintree, the next station along and at that time they were still using the 1930s carriages, just exactly as they are im Miss Marple. On my way to work in Witham I used to wonder if I was sitting in a seat which they had sat in, but on second thoughts, they would probably have been in the First Class section.
I seem to remember that Peter Davison was quite good in the role of Campion in the tv series.
I just recently finished this–my third Campion mystery–have you read Tiger in the Smoke–it’s really good! I don’t remember him having that dreaded falsetto voice (which I also tried to ignore!:)) in the later books, so maybe he grows out of it. I also had read that he was meant to be a parody of Lord Wimsey–which maybe is where that silly falsetto comes in?, but I had no idea Sayers and Allingham lived so close–interesting story. I would love to read a bio of Allingham. I have yet to read any Lord Wimsey mysteries, but I have read one featuring Harriet Vane. I’d be curious to see how they filmed the character and will have to see if I can borrow the films–Peter Davidson isn’t quite what I had visualized, but he’s close–maybe a little older than I imagined, but I think the character does get older as the series progresses!
Danielle,
I bought Tiger in the Smoke a couple of months ago, I believe it’s supposed to be her best but I bought an omnibus with The Mystery Mile and Look to the Lady which I’m going to read first as they’re earlier. I prefer vintage (1930s) crime to more modern ones because I really enjoy the period detail which they usually have in them. Everything seemed to be more genteel then, but then there was the T.B. and rickets and I would probably have been a maid or waitress in a tea-shop!
I can’t remember if I’ve ever read an Allingham bio but I definitely read a Sayers one, getting on for 30 years ago now, and I think that was where Allingham was mentioned. I used to work in Whitham, Essex and my office overlooked what had been Dorothy’s back garden. It was quite an ordinary house and she was dead by then of course. I think they have a Sayers Society there now, but I’m back living in Scotland and about 500 miles from Essex.
I hope you enjoy the Campion series if you can get a hold of it.
Katrina.