Thought provoking

The Mind Readers by Margery Allingham

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This is Margery Allingham’s last self-completed novel, number eighteen in the Albert Campion series, released in 1965. The first, The Crime at Black Dudley was published in 1929 and the author held that her gentleman sleuth was the age of the year, which puts him close to retirement in this adventure.

For the most part it was an enjoyable read, though anachronistic in that its Golden Age inter-war style jarred with the subject matter of Cold War espionage and the advent of modern technology.

Indeed, the plot is more of a spy story than a whodunit, as Campion (now officially it seems on the payroll of MI5) battles a mysterious adversary over a top-secret device that harnesses the powers of extra-sensory perception. The gadget works better for children and somehow his two young nephews have become embroiled through their public school. Added jeopardy arrives as one of them goes missing.

There is an excellent scene at a research station on the lonely Essex marshes where Campion finds himself cornered by a ruthless assassin. He quickly realises that at his age he is no longer in any condition to fight his way to safety.

This really ought to be the climax of the novel, but there ensues a lengthy information dump, like the unravelling of a tangle of wool of different colours, that really ought to have been carefully woven throughout the story itself.




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