RogerBW's Blog

Death of a Ghost, Margery Allingham 25 July 2016

1934 classic English detective fiction; sixth of Allingham's novels of Albert Campion. The great artist John Lafcadio left twelve final paintings, to be shown one per year after his death. At the unveiling of the eighth, a young artist is fatally stabbed with a pair of decorative scissors.

The assassination of another by any person of reasonable caution must, in a civilized world, tend to be a private affair.

I'm starting to think that Allingham just didn't have it in her to write a conventional mystery story. Here the setup seems fairly normal, except for a paucity of clues, complete with blatantly false confession and dark motives round every corner; but after the second killing, Campion announces that he's quite sure who the murderer is, he just can't make a case. The remainder of the book is an examination of how the murderer can be caught and indeed the motives for his actions; and, at that, Campion fails to spot what's going on when he offers himself up as a fresh target, or even to bring conclusive proof of the murders.

There's subtlety here too: that young artist married his impossibly beautiful but ugly-minded model to get her into England, and proposed a ménage a trois with his former fiancée, Lafcadio's granddaughter; and she refused, not on moral grounds, but because she thought his recent art was commercial dross as opposed to the good stuff he'd been doing when she met him. The household consists of Lafcadio's widow, said granddaughter, and two elderly former models and thus presumed mistresses; but they get on with life under the shadow of Lafcadio's ghost, even when they intensely dislike each other, because they have that memory in common and nobody else does.

There's also a sideswipe at other amateur heroes of the day, and I can't help seeing Dornford Yates and his kin as the target of this:

The fact remains, of course, that the people who say to themselves, "There is real danger here and I think it had better confront me rather than this helpless soul before me," are roughly divided into three groups. There are the relatives, and it is extraordinary how the oft-derided blood-tie decides the issue, who, moved by that cross between affection and duty, perform incredible feats of self-sacrifice.

Then there are those misguided folk, half hero, half busybody, who leap into danger as if it were the elixir of life.

And finally there is a small group of mortals who are moved partly by pity and partly by a passionate horror of seeing tragedy slowly unfolded before their eyes and who act principally through a desire to bring things to a head and get the play over, at whatever cost.

Mr Campion belonged to the last category.

Lugg and his leavening of humour are absent again, and indeed this is a fairly grim book throughout, with its focus on death and decay and might-have-beens from the Gay Nineties. The villain is especially well drawn, and Allingham does a good job of showing how traits that many would consider admirable can, by slight exaggeration, push someone to cunning murder. There's a certain amount of Police at the Funeral here, with cunning and subtle methods of murder – and with characters who are simply unpleasant, even if not actually guilty of anything.

A strange but rewarding book. Followed by Flowers for the Judge.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: Sweet Danger | Series: Albert Campion | Next in series: Flowers for the Judge

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1