The Beckoning Lady

Albert Campion #15

by Margery Allingham

Private detective Albert Campion's glorious summer in Pontisbright is blighted by death. Amidst the preparations for Minnie and Tonker Cassand's fabulous summer party a murder is discovered and it falls to Campion to unravel the intricate web of motive, suspicion and deduction with all his imagination and skill.

Danger is hardly unknown in this idyllic Suffolk village, but it is a less romantic peril than on Mr Campion’s first visit, more than twenty years ago.

‘Margery Allingham has precious few peers and no superiors.’ - The Sunday Times

‘Allingham’s work is always of the first rank.’ – New York Times

‘Unforgettable.’ – A.S. Byatt

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, British Literature, Classics, Golden Age Mystery, Audiobook

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Aka Maxwell March.

Margery Louise Allingham was born in Ealing, London in 1904 to a family of writers. Her father, Herbert John Allingham, was editor of The Christian Globe and The New London Journal, while her mother wrote stories for women's magazines as Emmie Allingham. Margery's aunt, Maud Hughes, also ran a magazine. Margery earned her first fee at the age of eight, for a story printed in her aunt's magazine.

Soon after Margery's birth, the family left London for Essex. She returned to London in 1920 to attend the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster), and met her future husband, Philip Youngman Carter. They married in 1928. He was her collaborator and designed the cover jackets for many of her books.

Margery's breakthrough came 1929 with the publication of her second novel, The Crime at Black Dudley . The novel introduced Albert Campion, although only as a minor character. After pressure from her American publishers, Margery brought Campion back for Mystery Mile and continued to use Campion as a character throughout her career.

After a battle with breast cancer, Margery died in 1966. Her husband finished her last novel, A Cargo of Eagles at her request, and published it in 1968.

Also wrote as: Maxwell March

Reviews

[Brian Clegg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I absolutely love Margery Allingham - and I think her Campion character is wonderful. But this is a book that's just for the enthusiasts. I found it rambling, lacking structure, sometimes verging on the incoherent. And the plot is a let-down too. This is one to avoid until you've read most of the others. Read it for completeness, but don't judge Allingham or the series by it.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I am determined to complete the Campion books, I do find many of them a struggle and this one nearly a defeated me. It involves so many characters and side stories that it is a confusing tangle, although, as always, I like Campion himself.

It is 1955 and Albert, wife Amanda and small son, Rupert, along with Lugg, are spending the summer in the country. Their friends, artist Minnie and husband, Tonker, have an annual house party, which everyone seems to take very seriously. There was a death recently, but Mr William Faraday was elderly and so, saddened though Campion is, people are accepting of the loss. However, there is then a body found, who turns out to a tax inspector. Minnie has long running issues with the Inland Revenue and so Campion becomes involved.

As well as Campion, his old friend, Charlie Luke, is staying with him and aids the investigation (in-between being enamoured of a local girl, with the unlikely name of Prune) and there is the jocular, Superintendent Fred South of the Suffolk police. Bookies, parties, debts, nosy secretaries, bizarre instruments and art exhibitions abound, alongside the party preparations. This makes a messy and confusing storyline, so, overall, not one of my favourites.

[Kateri · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Truth is such a naked lady," Mr. Campion spoke softly. "Apparently in well-regulated country families no one is so indelicate as to stare at all of her at once."

What a nicely savage way she has of putting things. I read all the earlier Campions years ago, in the first flush of my enthusiasm for the classic British masters of mystery. Somehow it escaped my notice that Margery Allingham had written nearly twice as many, again, featuring Campion in a smaller role and a wonderful, larger than life rumble of a police detective called Charlie Luke (for connoisseurs, Stanislaus Oates ascends to the highest rank of office in Scotland Yard and is rarely heard from again). These later novels are almost all wonderful. Appealing in character, as ever, but ominous in feeling in a way that reminds me of Patricia Highsmith and Muriel Spark. Brilliant and warm-hearted, and full of tongue-rolling turns of phrase, but with a savage, slithering little sting of ugliness that is very real and very alarming. Absolutely satisfying.

[Starry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rereading a book I own. I liked it better last time. This time, it seemed overpopulated with eccentric characters popping in and out of scenes to have lively dialog in dated British slang. It's all a bit manic for a hot summer weekend's read.

[Abigail Bok · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m a bit at a loss for how to rate this unusual little book. As a mystery it’s not that great, but Margery Allingham is such an interesting writer that I found it absorbing anyway.

In this entry in the Albert Campion series we return to Pontisbright, the home village of Campion’s unique wife Amanda. In fact everyone in Pontisbright is a unique character, so even without murder there’s plenty to hold one’s attention. This story is packed to the gills with interesting personalities, all bouncing off one another in surprising ways, which I enjoyed but many readers, especially those less deeply engrossed in Campionland, find overwhelming.

At the beginning a man falls dead off a bridge, and there ensues some delightfully, eerily neutral description of what happened to his body over the next week or so. (Later on there is another death, also described in the detached narrator’s voice to cringeworthy effect. I think both passages are brilliant.) In between we are treated to a fantastically naturalistic and meandering account of a pack of weird characters planning a very strange party. The murder investigation winds almost apologetically through the middle of the preparations, and nobody, from the police detectives to the author herself, seems to have much attention to spare for it. Things get resolved in a particularly slapdash and unsatisfactory way, but what really matters is the party. A reader expecting a traditional murder mystery is bound to be disappointed.

Margery Allingham is possibly the most audacious mystery writer I have ever read, and for me the great suspense in approaching one of her novels is discovering how she will next choose to contort and defy the norms of the genre. Popular mysteries have become so formulaic that his experimentalism is refreshing and delightful to me. This book is not one of her masterpieces, but it held many charms for me.

Trigger warning: The storyline involves spousal violence treated with a level of casualness that will shock many readers.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book in a Free Little Library at the park so jumped into the middle of the series somewhere and had to run to catch up with Campion and other characters. That, added to the use of idiom and cockney and other dialect, kept me somewhat confused throughout. Still, I enjoyed the mystery and the humor. It was a little like watching a *Thin Man* movie with Nick and Nora Charles and all the multitude of talkative and scattered characters. I have another of the series so will see how I fare with it.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Campion visits his wife’s home village with his son Rupert and friend Superintendent Luke. An elderly friend’s death and the discovery of a body under a bridge nearby bring Campion into the equation. All this happens with their eccentric friends Minnie and Tonker about to hold an annual party.

The story has several eccentric characters and the plot a little weak. The motive for the murders was not very believable but the story had humor and was entertaining especially Old Harry and his olfactory abilities and the bad tempered prankster Tonker.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The murderer turns out to be Miss Pinkerton who gives Uncle William a pill that she knows because he drinks will be fatal. The motive to allow her boss to get a chance to buy the property. She is seen by the tax collector who chases after her and who she hits on the head not to kill him but alas he has a thin skull. Racked by guilt she then kills herself and her employer puts the body in the river where it is discovered.

[Carmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Beckoning Lady,” said Mr. Campion. “How came a pub there, down at the end of such a lane? It isn't even on a through road.”
“It was never a pub.” Amanda spoke without taking her eyes from the scene. “It's just the local name for the house, which got into the deeds at some point. No one knows why it's called that, except that as far back as anyone can trace it has been owned by a woman, and there's always been trouble over it because it is said that as soon as a man sees it he tries to get hold of it to do it in. It has an extraordinary history. There have been dozens of lawsuits over it. This bank we're sitting on is the beginnings of a railway. There was an awful row about that last century, but it got stopped in the end at enormous cost. Then Minnie's mother had it, and her father the painter fell for it, and when she wouldn't sell it he stayed on and married her.”

[Lyn Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very silly, very English of a certain period and nowhere near her best but a bit like the curate's morning boiled egg - 'quite good in parts'.

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this novel but when you're halfway through and have nothing more than a dead person and lots and lots and lots....did I mention lots? of extraneous conversation that, while makes the characters interesting, does absolutely nothing to propel the plot.

Briefly, a corpse is found underneath a bridge. Who is it? Who killed him? You got me. I never even found out if there was a motive.

Sorry Ms. Allingham, but I am disappointed in your writing.

[Alex Sarll]

Sometimes, when a writer settles into a series, they get into a rut, but other times they get comfy and start testing the shape of the space they've made for themselves, which is when you get oddities like the landbound Aubrey/Maturin book, or this. It seems appropriate somehow that different Goodreads records disagree where it comes in the series, that the back cover and inside front biography can't agree on what Allingham's first novel was, because more than the lies and facades on which a story of detection normally relies, the mood here is that of a Midsummer revel, an eerier but also more homely sort of shifting in appearances and referents. Part of that is the rural setting, "Every man his own Robin Goodfellow" as the Suffolk village of Pontisbright gets ready for the big party of the season. But then you also have as the investigator Mr Campion, his method not the scalpel-like mind of Holmes or Wimsey but something more like a net, a matter of "nods and hints and mysterious understandings". At its worst, which unfortunately included the first story of him I read, this can end up as mere snobbery, but here it's something intuitive, a method which can find answers without erasing the space for negative capability. And a good thing too, in a world where the superintendent can find a warm fried egg in the middle of a field with no apparent explanation and it isn't a clue, just one of those things. What makes it work so beautifully, though, is that Campion avoids the smugness which can sometimes accompany that approach; I don't think I've ever seen any of the TV versions with Peter Davison, but can absolutely see why he was cast, given he always did have a great line in benign exasperation, with steel somewhere deep at the back of it.

As for the case he's investigating; beloved village figure Uncle William has died, apparently of natural causes, but Campion isn't so sure. And so has a less beloved individual, but that death isn't known at first, not until the body is found by "a large and sagacious dog" (who, inevitably, is one of the stars of proceedings). There's a wonderful passage following all the people who unwittingly walk past the corpse, its omniscient observer reminding me of the kaleidoscopic portrait of village life in Max Porter's Lanny, except considerably less showy and ultimately a lot less disappointing. Elsewhere, the narratorial point of view can happily hop into various characters' heads, including children, on whom Allingham has a good grasp even while leaving many of them as a sort of entertaining picturebook abstraction engaged en masse on mysterious errands.

And there is a real sense here of the sheer oddness of country life to those unfamiliar with it. Sometimes it verges on cheating, as when backstory and exposition can be delivered by garrulous locals – but it's not wrong, and elsewhere it's used to dead-end what might be expected to be useful avenues of investigation:
"Who would walk into the house unannounced?"
"Any one of about forty people. This is the country. Everyone walks round until they find somebody."
As with the local vicar who gets mortified whenever anyone waxes too religious, this could easily be taken for satire by anyone unfamiliar with English villages. Elsewhere the book is almost a hymn to them: one early scene is set "In the soft yellow light, while the sound of the mill-race and the songs of the birds were making the ancient conception of paradise appear both likely and sensible". Particularly when combined with the gentle pace of the investigation, the way almost everyone is more anxious that it might interfere with the party than that they might have a murderer in their midst, it reminded me at first of Dorothy Sayers' Busman's Honeymoon, especially given Campion is in Pontisbright with his wife (and son) rather than as the classic unattached detective. But while they share some of that village green quality, and indeed it's more pronounced here given The Beckoning Lady is actually set in high summer, back when English summertime was a lively glow rather than a murderous glare, there's a massive difference in that, for all Sayers in 1936 knew storm clouds were gathering, she was still writing about somewhere that felt fixed, Harriet becoming a part of something as timeless as the eternal ducks of Gaudy Night. Allingham, though, is writing in 1955, and a changed world. The improbably named estate of the title still has the ramshackle charm of a rural retreat for artists, but the next big house over, Potter's Hall, has been stripped of depth and character and life almost without its wealthy owner even wanting that, simply because capital has its own momentum – something which has only become more hideously apparent in the decades since. It's not a simple moan about modernity, mind: I was particularly taken with the modern artist George Meredith, whose abstract work initially seemed like an easy target, before it becomes apparent that something more interesting is happening: it turns out that his art, while not representational, is good at first, but gets rendered more and more enigmatic and less and less powerful as he fiddles and fusses at it out of what another character calls "straight wicked pride" in making it less and less appealing and communicative. I'm sure we can all think of a few creators like that, mentioning no names, David Simon. And a story featuring that can also make room for, and render surprisingly integral to the plot, a novelty musical instrument, of which we get various descriptions which always enable one to almost yet not quite picture it: I think my favourite is the lengthiest which, after several attempts, ends "Children, on the other hand, observed at once that its true charm was that it had obviously got out of hand." The creator of this prodigy made a packet, only to unwittingly land his wife with tax problems which have left it looking like they'll have to split up for financial reasons. And if part of what is going on here is blatantly obvious from very early on, it still works as a reflection of the horrible ways in which the economic-bureaucratic system intrudes on what should be affairs of the heart alone.

If I have a quibble, well, on the one hand, for all that I raced through this, it's not on a par with Sayers. But then that's slagging off a very fine horse for not being Pegasus. More of an issue, though to some extent still beyond the writer's control, is that a lot of the slang was entirely baffling; the one time I tried Googling any, I ended up absolutely none the wiser, and the fact that very occasionally some of it is explained just makes all the bits which aren't even more noticeable. Still, eventually I just decided to let it wash over me and contribute to the sense of the half-otherworldliness of proceedings. After all, it doesn't entirely matter whether it's obsolete or invented so long as it contributes to the mood, just as it doesn't really matter whether there was any prior existence for the fabulous exhortation "A treed cat, a man in love, and the French. God help the fool who tries to rescue any one of them."

[Bruce Beckham · Rating 2 out of 5]

After a promising start, with a mystery corpse lying undiscovered yet apparently observed for several days in an overgrown ditch, events took a confusing turn as a bewildering stream of characters arrived in the vicinity for a great midsummer party.

Usually I find that when I lose the plot it is a temporary state of affairs – gradually the names become familiar and the narrative arc starts to take shape.

Try as I might, each time I returned to this book, I found myself asking, “Where the heck am I? Who are all these people? What are they up to?”

It was rather like falling back to sleep, into a persistent dream – everything kind of makes sense, but only in the moment … past and future remain vague and hazy quantities.

I did eventually conclude that, in penning this novel, the author’s penchant for digression got the better of her. As always, she writes beautifully, but on this occasion with an excess of waywardness.

My advice, if like me you are working your way through the Albert Campion collection: fast forward to number 16.

[Sharla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book. I’ve always wanted to throw a great, big, stupendous party like the one featured here. The ending was great but overall this book is hard to follow. The plot becomes somewhat comprehensible by the time you reach the end but it’s a strange one. There are a slew of extraneous characters that add nothing. The whole thing often seems like listening to a deeply involved conversation between people who know each other well and have a long history when you don’t know either of them and have no knowledge of the background. The Campion books are touted as being stand alone and that is usually true but you will get this one a lot better if you’ve read a few of the others, especially Sweet Danger. In spite of these shortcomings I wouldn’t have missed this book for the world.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story melds old characters and new, with Campion and Amanda returning to her home village of Pontisbright, following the death of a character met in one of the first novels, and bringing along with them Charlie Luke, the powerhouse detective who has been central to more recent novels.

Allingham's strength with characterisation and odd people is on display here, along with some amusing fallibility of Campion, who is immensely dismayed at Luke's infatuation with an "old-fashioned" local girl.

[LJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you like your murder mysteries to be thrilling page-turners then this is not the book for you. The 15th instalment in the Campion series, this one was much more like a traditional Campion mystery than the book immediately before and the book immediately after in which Campion barely features (I haven't read any further than that yet, but I wonder if the styles are now going to alternate). Here we have Campion visiting old friends and subtly investigating two murders. I guess the word to describe it would be 'gentle'. Campion's sleuthing is so tactful that it barely registers, with the majority of the story being about his friends organising a party. Yes, we learn little titbits and possible red herrings about various characters' motives and alibis, but they are treated so calmly or vaguely that I felt the story never really started. On top of this characters talk at right angles, so that their meaning was never said outright. I presume we were supposed to infer what they meant but I found it all rather obscure. I get that Campion is trying to avoid a scandal and might need to use his vague act with the police, but I don't know why Allingham is using it with the audience.

It's a little sad really, because this book felt very much 'one for the fans'. Not only is it a return to the norm with Campion in the lead after the odd ensemble piece of Tiger in the Smoke, but The Beckoning Lady has multiple call-backs to previous novels including Sweet Danger, The Case of The Late Pig and Dancers in Mourning. Not only that but Amanda features more heavily than she has ever since she married Campion and Rupert their son finally gets some focus, though I'd still like more. So that's all awesome, but the story itself, while interesting, was strangely slow and not terribly exciting. Anyway, I hope there will be more Campion-led stories after this, and I hope Amanda and Rupert are with him.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lovely visit with a mature Campion, his family, and old friends. Now I (almost) want to reread the series.

[Maine Colonial · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not one of Allingham’s best Campion books. The plot plods along, and an inordinate amount of time is spent on repetitious dialog that has little to do with the murder.

I didn’t think much of this audiobook version, either. For some reason, the narrator has given Campion a particularly high voice and the older female characters very low voices. It’s confusing.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Campion, his wife Amanda, and their son Rupert return to her home village of Pontisbright for a summer party. Unfortunately their fun is threatened by the discovery of a dead body, who turns out to have unexpected ties to their good friends Tonker and Minnie, the hosts of the party. As Campion discreetly investigates alongside the local police and his old friend Inspector Luke, more and more strange circumstances appear and he has to use his ingenuity to untangle the web of lies and secrets.

This is quite a strange mystery, with a very convoluted plot and mysterious allusions at every turn. None of the characters say what they mean - either because they are hiding the truth, or simply because they are friends of long standing who use ‘in jokes’ and quips that baffle any outsiders. There are also a handful of extra characters who don’t really figure in the plot but appear to be there to add to the confusion.

Nonetheless, I rather liked this story. It was nice to see Campion among family and friends, and the scenes at the party were joyful. Allingham creates some interesting pairs of characters, with a rather charming romance for Charlie Luke, an unconventional but loyal marriage, and the pains of adolescence all getting some affectionately bizarre treatment. The resolution of the plot threads is satisfying and overall this is a good addition to one of my favourite Golden Age series.

[Merrilee Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Albert Campion is spending the summer in Pontisbright with his family, visiting the charming, eccentric Minnie and Tonker Cassand for their renowned summertime festivities.

Amanda and Albert are saddened by the recent death of the beloved but aged man they called “Uncle William”. Nonetheless, Mr. Campion is looking forward to a pleasant summer vacation with friends.

But from the first chapter, going into the story, we know that all is not well, since we have already been apprised of the presence of as-yet-undiscovered body hidden in the lovely countryside village grounds.

As always, Margery Allingham treats us to vivid personalities and lively surroundings, brilliantly conveyed in masterful words.

Of particular interest in this book is the presence of the Scotland Yard man Charles Luke, a long-time Campion partner in a number of cases. But this time, the strong competent detective is in a new circumstance: he is in love, and he hasn’t a clue how to deal with that. His friends, observing this unfamiliar scenario, are at a loss to support him.

This is of course a corking good mystery, but it is the stories of the people involved that make this particular Allingham book so compelling and ultimately satisfying.

My sincerest thanks to Camilla of the Margery Allingham Estate for providing a copy of this book for me to read and review.

[Carol · Rating 2 out of 5]

Totally agree with Brian Clegg review. If you are brand-new to Campion, do not start with this book. I kept getting the sensation that Allingham actually knew people like these in real life, and decided to mold the story around it. The result is half-drawn portraits of mostly unlikable characters.

[Brian J Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Campion the Great.....and Amanda

Very, very gripping. I could hardly put it down. I don't recommend it for bed time reading should you want to sleep!

[Lucy Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very odd book. After the darkness of Traitor's Purse and Tiger in the Smoke, we leave the fogs of war, and London, and find ourselves in blazing midsummer sunshine - apparently in Fairyland. Albert, Amanda, their son Rupert, now about five, and the ever-present Lugg are holidaying in Pontisbright, Amanda's old Suffolk home. In fact they're staying in her old house, where Chief Inspector Charlie Luke is recovering from a shooting incident.

Nearby, their old friends Minnie and Tonker Cassands, bohemians from the 20s, are preparing for their annual party. Minnie runs a huge household on unusual lines, drafting in a bunch of children to do most of the work: carrying champagne bottles, shelling peas, polishing cutlery. We find out why, later.

Campion has an ulterior motive. He thinks something is Up. Minnie's beautiful old house, called for fanciful reasons The Beckoning Lady, is under threat. It seems that some go-ahead property developers want to buy it to include in some super-scheme or other.

So the story rambles forwards. We already know that there is a corpse under a bridge - we've been told. It eventually comes to light. Everybody is mourning Campion's old friend "Uncle William", who though aged and ailing wasn't expected to leave quite so abruptly.

The supporting cast are sketched in: Emma Bernardine, a lifelong "handmaid to the arts" turns out to be sharper than we might have guessed. ("I don't need to be three detectives to work THAT out!") Miss Diane the charlady is hiding something. Her boyfriend Harry puts on a great performance of "finding" the murder weapon.

Charlie Luke and a local girl fall in love and everyone is appalled. She is rather posh, and everybody condemns her as "dull".

The property developers, who on the face of it are working for a millionaire friend of Minnie's, crash the party with some more dubious characters, and some London comedians put on a show. Another corpse floats down the river. I don't want to give away too much.

However absurd the story, it is always a delight to live in Allingham's world for a while. If you stand back you can marvel at the way she throws so much into the mix and connects it all together. There is a lot of misdirection going on. Yes, the Beckoning Lady is threatened, but quite HOW takes a lot of working out and explaining.

Minnie and Tonker are constantly roaring with laughter at funny anecdotes from their past, or laboured wordplay. I suppose you had to be there... And it's a shame Allingham thinks rustics are amusing. I skipped that bit this time.

The party comes off, journeys end in lovers' meetings, almost everything is explained. Cast members from earlier books turn up, and some take a hand in the plot.

And has anyone ever counted up the Shakespearean allusions?

[Tuesdayschild · Rating 3 out of 5]

2-3* Abridged edition.
Thanks to the line-up of some of the characters, and the nature of the mystery, this was not as interesting as other Campion mysteries I've listened to. It was really nice to see so much of Amanda and the Campion’s young son though … and to hear the reveal at the end ♥

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not my favorite Campion story, probably because all the romantic relationships are unpleasant or utterly mystifying. The murders seem like they are almost beside the point.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Up until now I have liked Allingham's Campion mysteries a lot, but I found this one difficult to follow. To me, the story jumps about so much, there are lots of characters, which I found hard to sort out from each other until quite a way in, and I really didn't need the romance to get in the way. There were some great descriptions, especially one of a person floating in a stream, but then there were conversations that I found difficult to work out who was saying what.
Maybe, it was just me having trouble with the book, but I do not rate this as one of the better books in the series.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this entry, Campion and his family visit the British version of his wife's "hometown" for a party when murder, of course, strikes.

Before I get to my review, I want to commend Ms. Allingham for attempting -- within the limitations of this genre -- something new with each volume in the series. She began with the very English "country house mystery," but later books were also legal dramas (Flowers for the Judge), psychological horror (The Tiger in the Smoke), and sabotage (Traitor's Purse). Given these different sub-genres, every reader is going to respond to some entries more than others based on personal preference.

That said, even though I haven't loved every single book, I've at least recognized them as mysteries and, because I enjoy this genre, I've finished them all -- until this one. This -- well, I don't know what to call it ("English countryside," perhaps?), but it certainly isn't a mystery. Rather it's scene after scene of old friends getting ready for a party: old friends who, other than Campion and recurring characters, we do not know, could care less about, and cannot keep straight. So, while it's true that there are murders to be solved, the victims, suspects, and motives (what there is of one) are so tangential to, well, anything that all of it is confusing and none of it matters. Side Note: Throughout, Campion is perpetually "horrified," which, given all that he's seen, is rather odd.

3 stars. I skimmed a lot; I was that bored (anything to do with taxes is as dry in fiction as it in real life). While I always enjoy seeing Amanda, this book was not good. And not a mystery.

[Surreysmum · Rating 3 out of 5]

[These notes were made in 1990. I read this book under the title "The Estate of the Beckoning Lady" (New York: Avon, 1955.] We are back in the country village where Albert Campion first met his wife Amanda, and both she and the precocious offspring have parts to play in this tale of a large party-cum-art-showing at the home of the Campions' eccentric friends. There are three deaths in the novel - an apparently natural death of an older invalid, a tramp with his skull bashed in, and the suicide of a maiden lady. It turns out that the maiden lady was the accidental cause of the old man's death, and (in self-defense) the almost accidental cause of the tramp's. But in the tradition of her unexpected endings, Allingham shows us that Campion has actually faked the evidence to prove this solution (although we are led to believe he's right). So, as usual, the murder is less important in this murder mystery than the ethical issues surrounding the detective. And really the substance of this particular story is in the delightful depiction of a cast of eccentrics in the splendid chaos of an oversize house-and-garden party.

[Damaskcat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Albert Campion is spending time in Suffolk with his wife Amanda and small son Rupert along with Scotland Yard Detective Charlie Luke who is convalescing from an injury acquired in the course of duty. Near neighbours – Minnie and Tonker – are holding a huge and sprawling party to which everyone is invited. But the day before the party a body is discovered and it seems many people may have had a reason to wish the victim out of the way.

This is a fascinating and amusing story of life in the nineteen-fifties set in idyllic countryside with a nice range of eccentric and mysterious characters. I found it an entertaining and enjoyable read which kept me guessing right up until almost the last page. The plot is complex and the background interesting. It was good to see more of Lady Amanda as well and to see how the relationship between her and Campion is developing.

If you enjoy crime novels set in in a gentler age which involve the reader in solving complex puzzles then try Margery Allingham. The Campion novels can be read in any order.

[Valerie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The first chapter of this book was so promising- I recently read Margery Allingham's first two books and I have to say that her writing style had definitely improved by the time she got to this book which I almost immediately realized had been written much later. That being said, this book was still only mediocre. Very little at all happens in the first half of the book and, as with the other two books of hers I've recently read, the time period's slang used sometimes makes the dialogue incomprehensible. When I can understand what he's saying, Albert Campion is hilarious and awesome. But the first half of this book bored me to tears. It picked up some in the second half but not a lot. If you'd like to read a Margery Allingham book, I'd recommend The Gyrth Chalice Mystery or The Tiger in the Smoke instead.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of the Campion mysteries benefit from a second reading, and this book proves that point. I finished the book, went back to the opening chapters to clarify some points, and ended up rereading it completely. Allingham includes so many little clues and so many characters that you're bound to miss one - or five - when you're making your way through the book the first time. In any case, the mystery and its development were clever, and there were so many interesting characters running around (even the small ones: Westy and his suit, the Augusts clowns) that I enjoyed reading about them again, knowing where they would play a part. Another entertaining Campion mystery, although a little foggy. Would have been 4 stars if I didn't think you needed to reread it to get all the nuances.