Customer Reviews

Deadly Duo

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Deadly Duo / Take Two at Bedtime is a book of two short novellas. The first one is called "Wanted, Someone Innocent" while the second one is called "Last Act." Albert Campion appears in neither story -- Allingham had many stories that did not feature her famous detective.
In the first story, Gillian Brayton, who had become an orphan at a young age and then taken in by her uncle (who then dies leaving her alone once more), is at a reunion of girls with whom she once went to school. There she runs into one of the more popular girls, a Rita Fayre. The two had never really been good friends, so Gillian is quite surprised when suddenly Rita begins acting like her best bud. Rita makes her an offer to come work for her at her estate, and Gillian is quite dazzled by the Rolls Rita had come in and accepts the offer. She doesn't really know what the job is; she just takes it thinking that she would like to be back in more affluent surroundings than her job at the hat shop offers her. When she arrives at the house, she is treated very rudely by most of the staff and she doesn't understand why. However, as time goes on, she comes to meet Rita's husband and life eases up a bit...until Rita is killed. Oops. Guess who's the prime suspect?
In book #2, Last Act, a very pampered former star from the French stage has taken up residence in a British country home. With her are her servants, her two grandsons and a young woman she has taken on as her ward. It seems that she has the intention of disinheriting one of her grandsons, and he's not exactly happy about it. So when she turns up dead, he'sthe one who falls under suspicion. But in a country home murder, there's always more than one suspect. So who killed the eccentric actress?
Frankly, I rather enjoyed the first story more; the second one tended to get more bogged down in useless dialog and could have been edited down much more. The first story had some rather cheesy dialog, but the story itself was much more twisted and had it been developed into a full novel, may have actually been quite good.
If you like the old English country home murder mysteries, with houses filled with suspects and motives, then you'll like this one. Readers of British mystery in general may also like this book, although I don't think it's one of Allingham's best.