I love old vintage mysteries – I rarely read modern crime fiction – and if I do its historical or a bit cosy. I adore all those gentlemen sleuths and big houses full of odd crusty characters and convoluted mysteries. But aside from all that which is all pretty great anyway – these old vintage mysteries from that period called the Golden Age of Crime, were proper well written novels, with interesting characters fully explored, they are wonderful period pieces. It is years since I read any Margery Allingham, I think I have actually only read a couple. So I was delighted when my sister slipped a couple of old vintage green Penguin Allingham’s into my birthday pressies this month. “After his first start of surprise the Inspector swung round to find himself facing a young man perched insecurely on a pile of debris in the warm murky shelter of the stove. A shaft of light from the furnace lit up the figure, throwing him into sharp relief. The Inspector had a vision of a lank immaculate form surmounted by a pale face half obliterated by enormous horn-rimmed spectacles. The final note of incongruity was struck by an old-fashioned deerstalker cap set jauntily upon the top of the young man’s head. Chief Detective-Inspector Stanislaus Oates began to laugh. Ten minutes before he had felt that spontaneous mirth was permanently beyond him. ‘Campion!’ he said ‘Who’s after you now?’Aristocratic amateur sleuth Albert Campion aids his friend Inspector Stanislaus Oates in a very perplexing mystery at the home of a group of unhappy ageing cousins and siblings. The household is certainly a very odd one, matriarchal figure Caroline Faraday is an imperious, tiny woman, doted on by her maid Alice, she rules over her household absolutely. There is an atmosphere of strict Victorianism about the place, old heavy furniture and long drawn out formal meal times. Morning tea is strictly forbidden as are motor cars. Her middle aged children and nephew share the house for purely monetary reasons; they each dislike all the others, and are given to frequent squabbles and sulks. Young Joyce Blount, engaged to a solicitor of Campion’s acquaintance, and distantly related to this odd collection of dependents, comes to consult Campion about the peculiar disappearance of her Uncle Andrew. Andrew Seeley is one of the warring relatives who share the house; Socrates Close. Coincidently Inspector Oates is with Campion when Joyce first meets Campion, and it is later that same day that Uncle Andrew’s body is discovered, shot and bound head and foot in a river. The next day, another of the residents of this large shared house is found poisoned in her bed. Joyce decides to stay in the house with her peculiar relatives – the three of them who are left – despite the worrying turn of events.Campion and Oates have much to unravel. There are lies and subterfuges to be uncovered, a missing hat, an enormous bare footprint in a flower bed, with yet another mysterious relative lurking somewhere in the background. This is all perfectly marvellous vintage crime fare – locked doors, blackmail and poisoning and a brilliant denouement that I really didn’t see coming.There was a rather unsettling moment at the end – which I can’t say too much about for obvious reasons – but suddenly out of nowhere came a rather unpleasant piece of casual racism which really left a sour taste. There have been lots of occasions when I have come across slight racist references before in old vintage mysteries – I tend to know already to expect them if there is a character in the story from another country for instance- and steal myself accordingly but this one caught me off guard rather and slightly spoiled a book I had otherwise thoroughly enjoyed. Still all that aside – I am looking forward to reading more Margery Allingham soon especially The China Governess – what a great title!
This is the first book in the series to not have organized crime as a plot element. Like all the other Campion books it is set an old family home with an upper-crust cast (Allingham comes near to breaking the fourth wall when she makes her police officer comment on the improbability of this given how few murders are actually committed in stately homes by rich families). In this case the dramatic personae are unusual primarily for their senescence: a tyrannical octogenarian widow keeps her elderly children and nephew living with her, under her thumb. They have no money of their own, no independent activities, not even any say as to their daily routines, food, clothing, etc. Even morning tea is forbidden simply because the dowager disapproves. They live according to the manner in which she conducted her home when she was a young wife in the 19th century. Julia, Kitty, Andrew, and William potter uselessly about the house, wiling away the empty hours by getting at each other. No wonder someone eventually snaps under these conditions! But who?The one young person living at Socrates Close is Joyce, a niece by marriage who serves as companion, secretary, and general dogsbody, keeping the bills paid on time and trying to soothe her hysterical aunts. This was published in the 1930s and we are told that Joyce had a job which she quit to go live in this old house in Cambridge with these awful people she owed nothing to, which I didn't understand since she seemed a pleasant and capable woman, but I guess that's plot convenience for you. In any case, Joyce happens to be engaged to Marcus, a college friend of Campion's, and when one of her uncles goes missing he directs her to the detective, even though he thinks she is just being a sillyhead, you know how women are. I also didn't understand why Joyce was marrying Marcus. I hope it was for money, or he was good in bed or something, because his personality wasn't very enticing.Aside from some minor antics early on, Campion cuts a more serious figure here than in earlier novels. I missed his crazy dialog but was not surprised, as he had been getting gradually more serious with each installment. At this point he is fairly sympathetic if a tad bland. I had previously read some books from later in the series, and am interested in seeing how her gets from this point to the rather bitter and unpleasant individual of a few years later.
What do You think about Police At The Funeral (2007)?
UNFINISHED REVIEW SAVED IN PROGRESSThis book felt like it was full of potential but never quite got there.The set-up is great: a Victorian matriarch in her 80s lives with four middle-aged dependents & her young companion, running the household on strict 1870s lines which do nothing to defuse the petty tensions between the younger people. Suddenly one of them vanishes, and while the young companion is trying to find the missing person, disaster strikes -- and then further catastrophes unfold, while Campion and others try to figure out what the heck is going on.Allingham is trying to shock the reader by revealing how petty & unpleasant ordinary people can be, and then increase tension by building suspicion that one or more of these ordinary middle-aged people actually did something truly terrible. It's fascinating, but even in the early 1930s it had been done, and done better, by other authors.lly did something truly terrible. But even in the early 1930s, a lot of mystery fiction had already explored the idea that ordinary people can be extraordinarily difficult to live with, and that these tensions might result in as well as the idea that a seemingly ordinary person might have be seriously unbalanced.
—Cera
1931, #4 Albert Campion, Adventurer, London and Cambridge; many secrets come to light when a cantankerous member of a socially prominent - but peculiar - Cambridge family goes missing. Both the book and the tv film are highly recommended for those who enjoy Golden Age puzzle plots. four-and-one-half stars.The autocratic - and personally remarkable - Mrs. Caroline Farraday rules over her odd family with an iron grip - no soft edges for *this* late-Victorian matriarch, thank you very much! Although very subtle in her actual wording and behavior, she holds the purse strings and rules her dependents' lives completely, and arbitrarily. And almost all the members of her large family are dependents, having failed at their businesses and, seemingly, their lives as well, and come home to live with Mother/Aunt/Grandmother. Now in her eighties, she may move physically slower now, but her hold on her family is still as strong as it was when she was A Force to Be Reckoned With in society in the 1880s and 1890s. Pretty much trapped in their gloomy old house of Socrates Close in academic Cambridge, the family bicker among themselves year after year, and slowly disintegrates from within. When the occasionally provocative (in a juvenile way) sixty-year-old Andrew, a bitter but still intelligent and erudite man, goes missing, the family lawyer calls in Campion to try and track him down without publicity or fuss. Things go downhill rapidly, from there, however, and when the first murder victim is found the police must be called in.Campion moves into the house and finds that the atmosphere is not only cloying, it's lethal, as he strives to come to an understanding of this psychologically damaged - and dangerous! - family, and to solve the murder(s) without those he's come to like being hurt, if possible. Darkly psychological, very slow-paced and introspective, this is still an entertaining read, and likely was very frightening when first published in 1931. Allingham's writing is, I have found, rather darker than Christie's, more psychologically dependent, and - beneath the foppish mask of the brainless-appearing Campion - very sharply observes society and the many sorts of people therein of the period. She's a very acute observer and an intelligent writer. I always enjoy her work, and this is no exception. Almost her very best writing, it's rather slow-moving for modern tastes, but still fascinating - and dark, dark, dark! Wonderful stuff. The tv film version of this is superb - it has Peter Davison as Campion and is filled with many familiar faces from British dramas of the 1980s and 1990s ("Andrew" is a particularly familiar face...). Plus the atmosphere of that house and the family dynamics are beautifully rendered. While they do rewrite a bit of the plot here-and-there (i.e., the family members are far more likeable), the revisions are not obtrusive, and the film is, in itself, a lot of fun to watch and puzzle through.
—Abbey
A member of an eccentric, aging family goes missing, then turns up dead, and terrible things start to happen around the family demense. Both the plot and the solution to the mystery is completely preposterous - one wonders if Allingham meant this as a spoof on the genre. The protagonists are likeable; several of the other characters are simply maddening. One aspect of the story - the explanation for the outrageous behavior of one of the characters - is tragic, and grotesquely racist. If I'm reading it correctly, the racism is on the part of one of the characters, not Allingham herself, and it makes the ending of the story somewhat deeper and sharper than the rest of the ludicrous plot would suggest.
—Grady McCallie
