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emmajayne18's review against another edition
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
michael5000's review against another edition
2.0
A bit of a train wreck of a mystery thriller, with the saving grace of a quirky secondary character who, as I understand it, takes over the franchise in subsequent Allingham books. Which is enough for me to try out the second installment, anyway.
misslulabelle's review against another edition
5.0
Nothing like a good British murder mystery to keep you reading! I finished this book in two days and enjoyed it immensely. It was the first book in which Campion appears and I am now very eager to read more of Allingham's work. Slight language, but less than is usually typical in a British novel.
shoelessmama's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.25
Okay- there were elements to this that I loved (dreary old manor house, remote location, completely original sleuth, myth surrounding family of said manor house which provides ridiculous game for bumptious youths to run amok) but overall this was just okay. There were flashes of brilliance buried within the repetitive and often dull advancement of the plot. The aforementioned sleuth was more of a side character in this novel, which made it confusing that this is marked as #1 in the Albert Campion mysteries. Without that knowledge I would have considered George Abbershaw to be the character doing the bulk of the investigating here.
I could have done without the gang of criminals angle. This would have been a much better story overall if the author had left them completely out of it. They do play a part in the denoument but I'm sure she could have found her way to make sense of things without them... or without them making an appearance at the manor, just being some fuzzy background noise. If they had been written better, less stereotypically, I might not have minded them as much. They were meant to feel threatening but seen through a modern lens they were not scary in the least.
I've heard that both Allingham and Campion evolve over the course of the series so I plan to carry on despite my lackluster experience with this one.
I could have done without the gang of criminals angle. This would have been a much better story overall if the author had left them completely out of it. They do play a part in the denoument but I'm sure she could have found her way to make sense of things without them... or without them making an appearance at the manor, just being some fuzzy background noise. If they had been written better, less stereotypically, I might not have minded them as much. They were meant to feel threatening but seen through a modern lens they were not scary in the least.
I've heard that both Allingham and Campion evolve over the course of the series so I plan to carry on despite my lackluster experience with this one.
cakereads's review against another edition
3.0
Margery Allingham - one of the Queens of Crime during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, right alongside [a:Agatha Christie|123715|Agatha Christie|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1321738793p2/123715.jpg], [a:Dorothy L Sayers|14415699|Dorothy L Sayers|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], and [a:Ngaio Marsh|68144|Ngaio Marsh|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1237946649p2/68144.jpg]. I'm a huge Christie fan, and I've read a few of Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey and liked it well enough. So it's only a matter of time I made my way to Allingham and Marsh.
The mystery is in this first book is not very twisty or intriguing - the plot is quite action-driven, what with our heroes trying to escape their predicament. Still where the book is excels is the protagonist Albert Campion. I see now why publishers loved his character so much they pushed Allingham to write more. He is definitely the highlight of the book, and I would continue reading this series just to read more about him!
Next on my list: Ngaio Marsh!
The mystery is in this first book is not very twisty or intriguing - the plot is quite action-driven, what with our heroes trying to escape their predicament. Still where the book is excels is the protagonist Albert Campion. I see now why publishers loved his character so much they pushed Allingham to write more. He is definitely the highlight of the book, and I would continue reading this series just to read more about him!
Next on my list: Ngaio Marsh!
judyward's review against another edition
3.0
Knowing my interest in classic mysteries, a friend gave me the first five Albert Campion books. This is the first in the series and was originally published in 1920. In this outing, Albert Campion is little more than a major supporting character in a classic English country house murder. The reader can easily tell that the book was written between the two world wars because of the anti-German bias and attitudes. An interesting look at English society during the late 1920s.
knitterscasket's review against another edition
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
2.0
siria's review against another edition
1.0
It's perhaps a bit unfair to chastise a book that's almost a hundred years old for being dated, especially when Margery Allingham was one of the coterie of writers in the Twenties and Thirties who helped to establish many of the conventions of detective/murder mystery fiction that seem familiar and even clichéd to us now. (Although The Crime at Black Dudley is only sort of incidentally an English Country House Murder Mystery, and more Bright Young Things Do Scooby Doo, with the Pesky Kids foiling the melodramatic schemes of an international crime ring run by men who run the gamut of stereotypes from xenophobic to plain old anti-Semitic.)
But Allingham's characters often act and think in ways that make me struggle to imagine how even her contemporaries could have thought them psychologically convincing: the emotional equivalent of a kiss in a Thirties Hays Code movie, where the couple mash their lips together without moving for 2.9 seconds in a vague facsimile of passion. The gender politics here are awful.
And even then I might have given this two stars—tosh, but of the readable-on-an-airline variety—if not for the ending, which breaks the cardinal rule of this kind of book. In other words, while it may be possible for the reader to work out whodunit, that's only through using the process of elimination—not because of any actual clues given, while all the information needed to understand whydunit is not given until the last chapter.
That, friends, is a cheat—and that, combined with the fact that the whydunit is what I will tactfully call bonkers bananas, is why I have no plans to pick up another Margery Allingham novel.
But Allingham's characters often act and think in ways that make me struggle to imagine how even her contemporaries could have thought them psychologically convincing: the emotional equivalent of a kiss in a Thirties Hays Code movie, where the couple mash their lips together without moving for 2.9 seconds in a vague facsimile of passion. The gender politics here are awful.
And even then I might have given this two stars—tosh, but of the readable-on-an-airline variety—if not for the ending, which breaks the cardinal rule of this kind of book. In other words, while it may be possible for the reader to work out whodunit, that's only through using the process of elimination—not because of any actual clues given, while all the information needed to understand whydunit is not given until the last chapter.
That, friends, is a cheat—and that, combined with the fact that the whydunit is what I will tactfully call bonkers bananas, is why I have no plans to pick up another Margery Allingham novel.