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Golden Age detectives
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I am reading Campion in order. Sorry but I am only on #3 - Look to the Lady. This was written in 1931 and Traitor's Purse was from 1941. Ten years is a big gap - 9 books. I apparently haven't yet unpacked Look to the Lady yet.I like the Jill Paton Walsh books. I believe that she has been working (or was at the beginning anyway) with the Sayers estate.
Love the Campion series which was shown here on PBS and was on Netflix for a while. But came the BBC flap and they disappeared.
I'm patiently waiting to inherit a classic Penguin collection of Macdonald Hastings' "Montague Cork" (the detective) books.See https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
^ I liked your review of "Cork on the Water"...https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'd not heard of MacDonald Hastings or indeed Montague Cork but your review inspires me to investigate
Just popping back to this thread to say that the Tommy and Tuppence series, Partners in Crime, really grew on me - I liked the second story much better, where I hadn't read the book and couldn't keep making comparisons! Hoping there will be another series of it. I also really liked David Walliams as Tommy, much to my surprise.
Judy wrote: "Just popping back to this thread to say that the Tommy and Tuppence series, Partners in Crime, really grew on me - I liked the second story much better, where I hadn't read the book and couldn't ke..."I enjoyed it too Judy. I haven't read the books for many years so that wasn't an issue for me. I really liked David Walliams too in spite of not being a fan of his comedy shows. I hope he'll do more acting roles now.
Poisoned Pen press are re-releasing some early British spy books. I just read The Traitor
and Trouble on the Thames
and found them really interesting.
Susan wrote: "Poisoned Pen press are re-releasing some early British spy books. I just read The Traitor and Trouble on the Thames [bookcover:Troub..."They look interesting.
Trouble on the Thames was the better of the two.
Interesting! I sometimes find the plots of spy thrillers hard to follow, but these sound very intriguing.
This is just to briefly mention that I've set up a small group for discussing British Golden Age crime writers and in particular the British Library Crime Classics reprints. If anyone is interested, here's the link.https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
Well done Judy. I hope the new group is a great success.
So excited, Judy. Can't wait to join in.
Thanks very much, Jan, Susan and Nigeyb.
I've joined. It's a welcome addition to the crime genre groups.
I'd love to join but I fear it would be the triumph of optimism over realism, in terms of reading the books. A real world book group, BYT, and keeping the Patrick Hamilton and Patrick Leigh-Fermor groups ticking over, already takes up a lot of my reading time.
I'm probably being optimistic in joining. : )
Nigeyb, yes, there is a limit to how many groups any of us can cope with! I'm only really active on BYT and a Proust group at the moment, and the Proust read finishes at the end of the year.But if you just wanted to join in the general chat threads you would be very welcome. :)
Optimism is a good quality Roisin - don't go changin'I try to be an active member of my groups. When I vote for a book, and it wins, then I read it and actively participate in the subsequent discussion. That's not to say it's the right approach or the only approach - and perhaps I should try to be more relaxed about it, but it fits with my personality. I'm also very punctual :-)
I must also confess to an occasional feeling of disenchantment when BYT discussions flounder through lack of meaningful participation and engagement with the book. Especially when the book has got lots of support in the poll but when the time comes the discussion is fitful and a bit ho-hum.
All that said, if anyone can make the "Reading the Detectives" group a roaring success it's Judy. Judy's insightful contributions and enthusiasm are the stuff of legend around these parts.
Ruth, thanks for the kind comment, very nice of you to say so. However, we'd better get back to BYT discussions in this thread now - I don't want to do too much advertising. Thanks for all the nice comments.
Judy wrote: "Nigeyb, yes, there is a limit to how many groups any of us can cope with! But if you just wanted to join in the general chat threads you would be very welcome. :) "
Aw, thanks Judy. How can I refuse an offer like that? I'm in!
Very kind of you, Nigeyb - I'm blushing. Of course, your own enthusiasm is far more legendary. ;)
Thanks Nigeyb! I won't! : ))I think sometimes people might find some topics uncomfortable or difficult to talk about. Perhaps? I know that sounds odd, especially since our group does consist of a lot of people who are highly knowledgeable, open minded and are prepared to discuss things I find. The group has certainly made me think about particular things and consider other points of view.
Last month's fictional read for example featured a lynching. Not much was said about this in the discussion, yet this event seemed quite important as to why the character was passing for white.
We talked about hair, perceptions, passing for white, position of blacks at that time and history, Sally Hemings etc, but not much was said about that pivotal scene, I think. I suppose what does one say about something so horrible and shocking?
I could be wrong! : )
Judy wrote: "Very kind of you, Nigeyb - I'm blushing. Of course, your own enthusiasm is far more legendary. ;)"Thanks again. I've signed up and posted. See you there. And here.
Roisin wrote: "I think sometimes people might find some topics uncomfortable or difficult to talk about. Perhaps?"
You may be onto something there Roisin. I hadn't considered that possibility, and your examples support your argument well.
Thanks! We cover a period which was exciting but also featured two World Wars, the changing role of women, families, countries fighting for independence from the Empire and so on. All highly charged stuff! : )When I was reading a Dorothy L Sayers book some time back, it occurred to me how certain aspects of people's lives was quite modern and contemporary. How people were changed by war, independent women, trying to improve people's lives. All very now.
Just getting back to Traitor's Purse. There's a ten part radio dramatisation available over on Radio 4 Extra. 8 of the 10 episodes are on iPlayer. I've recorded all 8 and will grab the final 2 when they become available. I have a very long drive coming up later in the month so this will be perfect.Celebrated amateur detective Albert Campion wakes in hospital accused of attacking a police officer, and suffering from acute amnesia. All he can remember is that he was on a mission of vital importance to His Majesty's government before his accident...
Roger Allam begins reading the first of Margery Allingham's ten-part classic detective story from 1941.
Abridged and produced by Jane Greenwood.
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Loftus Audio and first broadcast in 2011.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b015fk05
Traitor's Purse ...is a startlingly good book. It is taut and trim and full of delicious shocks and narrative tension. It is original and moving and amusing. How anyone, working in brief fragments of time, could imagine and hold together the world of this story and tell it infallibly at the right pace is hard to imagine. I do not know if she ever realised what she had done, although she shows intermittent signs of defending her work against critics and editors. In a review in Time & Tide in 1940, she wrote: “the thriller proper is a work of art as delicate and precise as a sonnet”. She knew what she was doing, and what her forms required. But she seems to have had no faith in anyone noticing just how complex and splendid her forms were.
Perhaps we should do Traitor's Purse for a BYT group read.
Books written at the start of WW2 when Nazi Germany seemed unstoppable have a special quality in my experience.
This bit is wonderfully evocative...
During the first half of 1940, she (Margery Allingham) worked almost furtively on Traitor’s Purse, hiding in the garden, or secreting the manuscript in a biscuit tin during bombings. She wrote: “You’ve no idea how difficult it is to finish a modest thriller when all your neighbours are mucking about in the dawn looking for nuns with sub-machine guns and collapsible bicycles to arrive by parachute.”
Here's three GR reviews that, between them, hint of a shift in style and emphasis between the earlier books and the later ones.
This is one of the strongest of the Campion books - almost pure thriller, set on the eve of World War II. Campion wakes, not knowing anything, even himself, hears a discussion of coming murder charges, and escapes into a non-stop freefall of pretending he knows what the hell is going on, with every second person he meets expecting him to save the world from a threat he can't even remember.
An unusual entry in the entertaining Albert Campion series. As the book opens, the detective has no idea who or where he is - he just knows there's a threat and he has to get away. The wartime plot is pedestrian, but Allingham's effortlessly literary style and the amnesiac hero's very slowly dawning consciousness of the crimes being committed and planned around him make this a gripping tale reminiscent of "The 39 Steps" or even "North by Northwest."
I've read this one before but am re-reading all the Campions, out of order. This is one of the later books, and one of the better ones. I don't want to give a spoiler so let me just say that it's the one in which Campion, who is kind of a very slight, often nasty character in the earlier books kind of reappraises who he is and is sort of reborn. Interestingly, in the Campion books that followed this one, he becomes actually a minor character but the later books are actually better, with more interesting characters and descriptions and plots that really engage you. The plot on this one is a little outlandish and silly but the rest of the book overcomes the plot. Definitely worth reading.
I think Traitor's Purse sounds absolutely fascinating and, as I say above, written at a time when so much was happening, and so much was unknown, that creative juices were stimulated to sky high levels.
Nigeyb wrote: "Just getting back to Traitor's Purse. There's a ten part radio dramatisation available over on Radio 4 Extra. 8 of the 10 episodes are on iPlayer. I've recorded all 8 and will grab th..."Thanks Nigeyb - sounds good.
C.H.B. Kitchin is probably not a name to conjure with...but I came across a couple of recommendations for his novels and picked up a paperback of Death of My Aunt (1929) - the first of a short series featuring a stockbroker sleuth. I am not an aficionado of detective stories, 'Golden Age' or otherwise, but I liked his writing. In fact, I liked it a lot more than the story itself... Ah well. Review at https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Lots of Lord Peter Wimsey coming up on BBC Radio 4 Extra...http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s9g4l
Including, Have His Carcase in six parts...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00s8kxl
When crime author Harriet Vane finds a body, debonair sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey investigates.
Starring Ian Carmichael as Lord Peter Wimsey, Maria Aitken as Harriet Vane, Nigel Stock as Inspector Umplety, Warren Clarke as Haviland Martin and Isabel Dean as Mrs Weldon.
British gentleman detective Lord Peter Wimsey features in a number of detective novels and short stories by English crime writer, Dorothy L Sayers. Have His Carcase was first published in 1932.
Classy and sharp-witted, aristocratic amateur sleuth Lord Peter Bredon Wimsey was born in 1890 and educated at Eton and Oxford, before serving in the military during the First World War.
Ian Carmichael appeared as Lord Peter Wimsey for BBC Radio from 1973 to 1983, in addition to the BBC TV adaptations that were broadcast between 1972 and 1975.
Adapted for radio in six episodes by Alistair Beaton.
Producer: Martin Fisher
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 1981.
Many thanks for the info, Nigeyb. I've listened to the first couple of episodes of this adaptation recently and it's pretty good.
After reading about her brother, Philip Allingham, in the excellent “Cheapjack”, I am finally sampling some Margery Allingham. I’m reading ‘Traitor's Purse’, a book I'd identified some time ago having enjoyed the radio adaptation.‘Traitor's Purse’, was written in 1940 at the beginning of WW2 and has an ingenious war related plot that, whilst invented by Margery Allingham, was coincidentally something the Nazis had actively considered around the same time.
Her detective protagonist, Albert Campion, is another in the long line of gentlemen detectives so popular in the Golden Age era. I am not sure how typical this depiction is as he suffers from amnesia for much of the book, and this rather brilliant plot device means the reader remains as in the dark as Campion.
According to Wikipedia ‘Traitor's Purse’ is the 13th book in the series...
Albert Campion series
The Crime at Black Dudley (1929) (US title: The Black Dudley Murder)
Mystery Mile (1930)
Look to the Lady (1931) (US title: The Gyrth Chalice Mystery)
Police at the Funeral (1931)
Sweet Danger (1933) (US title: Kingdom of Death/The Fear Sign)
Death of a Ghost (1934)
Flowers for the Judge (1936) (US title: Legacy in Blood)
Dancers in Mourning (1937) (US title: Who Killed Chloe?)
Mr. Campion: Criminologist (1937) (short stories)
The Case of the Late Pig (1937) (originally appeared in Mr Campion: Criminologist)
The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)
Mr. Campion and Others (1939) (short stories)
Traitor's Purse (1941) (US title: The Sabotage Murder Mystery)
Coroner's Pidgin (1945) (US title: Pearls Before Swine)
The Casebook of Mr Campion (1947) (short stories)
More Work for the Undertaker (1948)
The Tiger in the Smoke (1952)
The Beckoning Lady (1955) (US title: The Estate of the Beckoning Lady)
Hide My Eyes (1958) (US title: Tether's End/Ten Were Missing)
The China Governess (1963)
The Mind Readers (1965)
Cargo of Eagles (1968) (completed by Philip Youngman Carter)
Mr. Campion's Farthing (1969) (by Philip Youngman Carter)
Mr. Campion's Falcon (1970) (US title: Mr. Campion's Quarry) (by Philip Youngman Carter)
The Allingham Minibus (1973) (aka Mr. Campion's Lucky Day) (short stories)
The Return of Mr. Campion (1989) (short stories)
Mr Campion's Farewell (2014) (Begun by Philip Youngman Carter, completed by Mike Ripley)
…so the character was very well established.
Despite not reading any of the previous books, I found no difficulty in just leaping straight into the middle of the series.
So far it’s very enjoyable, despite already knowing the plot.
Bright Young Things
Books mentioned in this topic
Traitor's Purse (other topics)Cheapjack (other topics)
Have His Carcase (other topics)
Death of my Aunt (other topics)
Traitor's Purse (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Philip Allingham (other topics)Margery Allingham (other topics)
C.H.B. Kitchin (other topics)
Margery Allingham (other topics)
MacDonald Hastings (other topics)
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^ Hurrah. Thanks Barbara.
I've not seen the BBC series however agree it could provide an easy intro to those readers who don't want to read all the books and just want to dive in.