The Crime at Black Dudley - Margery Allingham ****

By Brian Clegg

Most of Margery Allingham’s Campion books sit on my shelf, but I’ve rarely reviewed them and never read them in order – so I’m starting a run through with the very first, published in 1929 when Allingham was just 25.

It’s an accomplished bit of writing for someone that age – and a clever conceit for what was probably originally conceived as a one-off – the main character is a doctor who fancies himself as something of an amateur sleuth. At a weekend party at the house Black Dudley, Dr Abbershaw is mostly concerned with trying to tell a girl what he feels about her – until his host dies under dubious circumstances. Things start to go downhill rapidly, but Abbershaw thinks he knows who to suspect – an uninvited guest, Albert Campion.

It’s a clever conceit because the reader at the time would have genuinely suspected Campion, only to discover that he is in part the real hero of the hour… in his unique way.

There are already hints of the slightly problematic aspects of Allingham’s writing for the modern audience – a pair of foreigners at the dinner table are not exactly painted in the best of lights, in part just because they are foreign. (Admittedly, only 11 years after the First World War, it’s not surprising the German character is disliked… and in the end they are definitely not nice people.) And we do have a village idiot too.

However, there is also Allingham’s wonderful ability to produce a cross between a murder mystery and a jolly adventure (even if someone is dead) – and Campion’s apparent brainless and always-joking character is already starting to develop nicely. It’s alleged that he was a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey (never in the same class to my mind), but if he was, it was with a strong added dash of a P. G. Wodehouse character. 

Allingham sets up a suspenseful ending only really capable of being resolved by something close to a deus ex machina, but I can let her off for that And then, proving the incidental nature of Campion here, he doesn’t even appear in the final act. A good start nonetheless for what would be a remarkable series of books, especially as Allingham would age Campion over the many years she wrote them, allowing him to mature as a character.

You can buy The Crime at Black Dudley from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com and Bookshop.org

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Now Appearing is the blog of science writer Brian Clegg (www.brianclegg.net), author of Inflight Science, Before the Big Bang and The God Effect.