The Crime at Black Dudley

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 show more 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. show less

Real Rating: 3.25* of five, rounded down because WOW this didn't age that well

Albert Campion's neurodivergent character is something we're not unfamiliar with in the 21st century. It was baffling in the 19th, whence Allingham derived her world-view. I don't want to give you the wrong idea: she isn't making fun of Campion, she's making sport of him, and the difference is not mere distinction.

Campion appears for the first time in this story as comic relief. He isn't very important in the proceedings at all. This is a case of the publisher getting feedback..."we LOVE that looney, he made us laugh!"...and requiring the author to make more of him in future. A similar thing happened, in my observation, to Louise Penny: The Three Pines series show more was originally about Clara, a very lonely and dissatisfied married Artist living in a rural Quebecois village with an interesting history and a future as a criminal hotbed. Along came Inspector Gamache of the Sûreté and hey presto! The books are now centered on him.

So this, the first outing, isn't A Campion Story. That's the source of my downward rounding. But that doesn't mean that it's not worth reading. I think, despite social attitudes I don't much like, that stories from this period are very fun reads because they set the standards of fair-play puzzle-based series mysteries that we-the-bookish devour with insatiable appetite. I do want to let you know that those sensitive to the portrayal of the neurodivergent should either skip the read or, and this is what I encourage you to do, go into it prepared for the attitudes of the past to prevail over your preferred standard. show less

Poor Albert Campion gets no respect — nor does his author, Margery Allingham.

Ninety years after Hercule Poirot first exercised his little grey cells in The Mysterious Affair at Styles and Lord Peter Wimsey first pranced through Whose Body?, these redoubtable detectives and their brilliant authors are still household names. But Albert Campion? Like Ngaio Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn, Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs. Bradley, or Patricia Wentworth’s Miss Silver — all of whom were quite popular in their day but have, sadly, fallen into obscurity — Campion has been cheated of the lasting fame that is his due.

But perhaps Bloomsbury Reader’s new edition of Campion’s first case, The Crime at Black Dudley, first published in 1929, can remedy show more the situation.

Like television’s Colombo or Lord Peter Wimsey, the fair-haired, bespectacled Albert Campion at first glance appears to be a bit of fool. Do not be taken in! Wise-cracking and with a high-pitched voice, Campion is crazy like a fox; unlike the moralistic Lord Peter, he doesn’t mind playing both on the side of the law and on the other. Campion’s in attendance at a house party at Black Dudley when the host, Colonel Gordon Coombe, a wheelchair-bound man who wears a plate on his face to cover hideous scars from the war, dies. Although his personal physician claims the death due to heart trouble, two other guests, pathologist Dr. George Abbershaw and newly minted doctor, Michael Prenderby, soon work out that Coombe was murdered. They begin trying to ferret out what secrets lie at Black Dudley, but it is Campion, of course, who truly shines when the crooks emerge.

The Crime at Black Dudley contains a good deal more suspense and more twists that you’d ever expect in a British cozy released in 1929. Although more than 85 years old, the novel remains as much of a five-star read as ever, and I read it in just a few sittings. Priced at a mere $1.99 in the Kindle format, readers owe it to themselves to get a taste of Allingham’s delightfully quirky series with The Crime at Black Dudley.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I received this ebook from NetGalley and Bloomsbury Reader in return for an honest review. show less

The first in the series of Albert Campion "mysteries," although it's easy to dismiss this one and move straight on to "Mystery Mile," the first to focus on Campion as the protagonist. Frankly, it's obvious from the start that these aren't true mysteries in the traditional sense: an Allingham novel rarely gives the audience the ability to put all of the pieces together on their own, and this one is no exception. It is more accurate, really, to call the Campion books adventure-thrillers, and usually well-characterized ones at that.

At this early stage, though, many of the characters feel quite similar: most of them are upper-class young people, and they pretty much all speak in the same affected 1920s vernacular. It is absolutely obvious show more that the stand-out character is Albert Campion himself, who features here as an *extremely* showy secondary character. He takes the lingo to its zenith, fooling around and generally making an ass of himself, all the while managing to quite cleverly manipulate the situation. Small wonder Allingham chose to focus on him in her next thriller and for many more books thereafter.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this book is its rapid tonal shifts - from thriller to romance and back again - and the final chapter's venture into social moralization feels just a little bit awkward (not to mention extremely surprising). There are, to be fair, better novels of this type from the era; Agatha Christie's The Secret Adversary leaps to mind as one, although neither her Tommy or Tuppence are nearly as vivid a character as Campion. And that's the difference, really: if Christie is better at plot twists, Allingham quite honestly has the upper hand at characterization. This isn't her most layered or enjoyable work, to be sure. Still, it's a not inauspicious beginning, and it definitely whets the appetite for more adventures with the elusive Mr. Campion. show less

this is the first in a series of books featuring Albert Campion as detective. Only it's almost as if this wasn't written with him in mind as the detective. The crime is solved by the doctor, Abbotshaw, and not actually by Campion (although it's possible he knows more than he lets on, but he certainly doesn't do the unveiling)

Set in a Gothic pile in the country, it's a tale of a house party, a grisly ritual with a dagger and a den of thieves. the murder is committed, covered up and then the house party intimidated by the criminals. Actually, the main part of the book is how they escape the criminal gang, not so much as to who did the murder. It's an inventive one, with enough twists & turns to keep you guessing to the end (although I show more did have a vague inkling as to who did it - but no motive).

As the first in what turns into a series, I suspect this may be atypical. But I'd be interested to see how Campion develops from here. So far he strikes me as Whimsey-esque, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. show less

This classic mystery introduces Allingham's major character Albert Campion. Although he isn't the main character in the country house mystery, his presence is felt.

A group of people have been invited to a country house named Black Dudley for a weekend. The viewpoint character is George Abbershaw who is a pathologist who has sometimes worked with the police. He is there mainly because a young woman he is pursuing is also invited to the party.

When a parlor game involving the historic Black Dudley Dagger ends with the death of the host of the weekend, Abbershaw finds himself trying to solve the mystery. Things get even more complicated when he and some of the other guests realize that a number of the guests are criminals. They find show more themselves held hostage by the criminals until a missing item is returned to them.

Abbershaw had found the missing papers and burned them for some mysterious reason making the return impossible. The criminals aren't willing to believe that the papers are gone and threaten the guests.

I found this an interesting story but with some problems. First of all, there was such a large cast of characters that I couldn't keep the villains and victims clear in my mind. Second, some things happened that didn't really make sense like Abbershaw burning the papers for no apparent reason.

I did enjoy Campion's appearances and his character which reminded me of the character of the Scarlet Pimpernel though set in modern times. I also had some problems with the racial prejudice running rampant through the story which automatically classified the Germans as villains. I could set that aside considering that the book was published in 1929, but I still found it jarring.

I was intrigued enough by Albert Campion that I'll be looking for more books in the series. show less

This classic mystery introduces Allingham's major character Albert Campion. Although he isn't the main character in the country house mystery, his presence is felt.

A group of people have been invited to a country house named Black Dudley for a weekend. The viewpoint character is George Abbershaw who is a pathologist who has sometimes worked with the police. He is there mainly because a young woman he is pursuing is also invited to the party.

When a parlor game involving the historic Black Dudley Dagger ends with the death of the host of the weekend, Abbershaw finds himself trying to solve the mystery. Things get even more complicated when he and some of the other guests realize that a number of the guests are criminals. They find show more themselves held hostage by the criminals until a missing item is returned to them.

Abbershaw had found the missing papers and burned them for some mysterious reason making the return impossible. The criminals aren't willing to believe that the papers are gone and threaten the guests.

I found this an interesting story but with some problems. First of all, there was such a large cast of characters that I couldn't keep the villains and victims clear in my mind. Second, some things happened that didn't really make sense like Abbershaw burning the papers for no apparent reason.

I did enjoy Campion's appearances and his character which reminded me of the character of the Scarlet Pimpernel though set in modern times. I also had some problems with the racial prejudice running rampant through the story which automatically classified the Germans as villains. I could set that aside considering that the book was published in 1929, but I still found it jarring.

I was intrigued enough by Albert Campion that I'll be looking for more books in the series. show less