Customer Reviews

Police at the Funeral (Allingham, Margery)

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Coincidence and madness are the twin themes of "Police at the Funeral." The book starts out when a planned meeting between Campion and Joyce Blount turns into an accidental meeting with Inspector Stanislaus Oates and a peculiarly unpleasant fellow who takes one look at Joyce and flees. From there the tale follows a twisted path.

Joyce is the fiancée of Marcus Featherstone, one of Campion's oldest friends. She lives with her great aunt Caroline, a pair of unpleasant uncles and an equally depressing brace of aunts. Uncle Andrew, a singularly miserable fellow, has vanished and Joyce has come to Campion for help. In short order Andrew is found murdered in such a fashion as to implicate his heavy drinking brother William. Campion's presence is commanded by Great Aunt Caroline and he is settled into Socrates Close, their Cambridge home, to act as detective, defender and general factotum.

Yes, I said commanded. Great Aunt Caroline Faraday is a true Victorian 'grand dame.' For most of her life she has ruled Socrates Close and much of Cambridge's social life. Even now, in her 90's she is a force to be reckoned with. She has no patience with her dependents, who share little of her and her departed husband's brilliance. She sees no alternative to the ministrations of Campion, with whose mysterious but illustrious family she is well acquainted.

It will take the death of one of Joyce's aunts and yet another fatality before Campion is able to meet her expectations. In doing so he will brush with evil at its most petty and spiteful. The lightheartedness that Campion uses to cover his true feeling entertains and delights us, but is never completely able to dispel the pall that lies upon the great house until the very last, when he once again finds a way through.

I believe this is the first time Allingham puts aside her Chinese fire drill device and settles in to write true detective fiction. Her talent reveals itself as quite capable of handling the slower pace, which allows here more time to develop a remarkable cast of characters. These are never guilty of tediousness despite any other flaws they chose to reveal.

It is a shame that Allingham's books are often allowed to go in and out of print. Too often, Campion aficionados are condemned to rummaging in used bookstalls to fill a gap in their collection. Luckily, most of us like to rummage. Police at the Funeral is a wonderful tale that is reminiscent of Marsh's "Death of a Peer," although the Faradays are nowhere as near as appealing as Marsh's Lampreys. Except for Great Aunt Caroline, of course, who is a perfect treat. I can only tell you this tale is well worth digging for.

A diabolical murderer has been at work in the Victorian precincts of the manor known as Socrates Close. The formidable Great Aunt Caroline has all her wits about her, but her family does not and they have been dropping like flies. The police are naturally baffled. Only Albert Campion, faintly redolent of the early Lord Peter Wimsey with his fatuous smile and episcopal connections, stands between the criminal and a particularly nasty victory. This is Golden Age crime in full glory: an extremely ingenious puzzle, very well drawn period characters (Great Aunt Caroline is unforgettable), the usual understated English humour and a villain who is memorable in more than the usual ways. I'm not sure if Margery Allingham ever wrote a better book than this, so sit back, relax, make yourself comfortable and get ready to enjoy a mystery the likes of which they seldom write these days. If it's raining outside, so much the better!

This 1932 novel is the 3rd in the Campion series. 'Albert Campion' (one of his aliases) has been contacted by an old school friend who has asked Albert to look into a matter for his fiancee's family - the Faradays, it seems that one of his future in-laws is missing. As the young lady is filling in Albert on her uncle's disappearance word arrives that the missing man has been found, unfortunately dead.

Upon arriving at the Faraday household Albert discovers that his grandmother and the matriarch of clan, Aunt Caroline, are old friends. With this entree into the family Campion begins to unearth old family secrets and scandals. Ultimately the truth comes out but not before the body count rises.

Albert Campion has been compared to Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey especially in the earlier novels. The similarities are noticeable in this one but less so than the previous novel, MYSTERY MILE. Campion is still traveling in the close world of upper class old English families and still playing the effete fool. The setting here is Cambridge (as opposed to Wimsey's Oxford) and Campion's police contact Oats, is reminiscent to Wimsey's Parker. Campion though is beginning to remerge from Wimsey's shadow here and developing more of his own style.

The mysteries are intriguing, the clues are all present and challenging enough to keep the reader guessing. This is a great entry into the series, one that fans will not want to miss. It would also be a good place to begin if the earlier books are not available.

From 1931 we have Albert Campion solving the murder of a loathed nephew in a country house, a house still living in Victorian times run by the 80 year old matriarch.

Its pretty standard whodunnit fare, lots of suspects and red herrings strewn about. All the information is given to the reader to solve the mystery but it plods along so pedantically it gets to the stage where the reader couldn't be bothered.

This is the fourth Campion novel by Allingham and evidently the series picked up,so perhaps this one was an off day rather than representative of the entire series.

(1931) The middle-aged Faraday 'children' chafe under the iron hand of Great Aunt Caroline, who never made it out of the Age of Victoria. Allingham's serial detective, Albert Campion steps in when Uncle Andrew turns up dead. This is one of the more claustrophobic Campions, as most of the action takes place in Great Aunt Caroline's Victorian mansion in Cambridge, called Socrates Close.

Campion provides a description of himself to his prospective client:

"My amiable idiocy is mainly natural, but it's also my stock-in-trade. I'm honest, tidy, dark as next year's Derby winner, and I'll do all I can [to help you]."

Hints at Campion's noble origin and real name are, in turn, provided by Great Aunt Caroline:

"And now," she continued, turning to Campion, "let me look at you, Rudolph. You're not much like your dear grandmother, but I can see the first family in you...as long as that impossible brother of yours is alive the family responsibilities are being shouldered, and I see no reason why you shouldn't call yourself what you like."

Rudolph! Oh, my!

Inspector Stanislaus, Campion's friend who is brought into the case at Socrates Close believes there's "madness with an 'ism' of some sort" lurking within the house, most emphatically after a second victim drinks a cup of poisoned tea. He could be right. Allingham dresses up a psychologically fraught mystery with mysterious tramps, vicious cats, and gigantic naked footprints outside a window at the murder victims' house.

The solution to this mystery is technically ingenious, and please note that "Police at the Funeral" (1931) was published eight years before Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" (1939).

Here is a complete list of the Campion novels that Allingham wrote ("Cargo of Eagles" was completed by her husband after her death in 1966). There are also short story collections and Campion novels that were written by her husband, Youngman Carter, which I didn't include in this list.

1. The Black Dudley Murder aka The Crime at Black Dudley (1929)
2. Mystery Mile (1930)
3. Look to the Lady aka The Gyrth Chalice Mystery (1931)
4. Police at the Funeral (1931)
5. Sweet Danger aka Kingdom of Death aka The Fear Sign (1933)
6. Death of a Ghost (1934)
7. Flowers for the Judge (1936)
8. The Case of the Late Pig (1937)
9. Dancers in Mourning aka Who Killed Chloe? (1937)
10. The Fashion in Shrouds (1938)
11. Traitor's Purse aka The Sabotage Murder Mystery (1941)
12. Pearls before Swine (1945)
13. More Work for the Undertaker (1948)
14. The Tiger in the Smoke (1952)
15. Estate of the Beckoning Lady (1955)
16. Tether's End (1958)
17. The China Governess (1963)
18. The Mind Readers (1965)
19. Cargo of Eagles (1968)

I really loved this entry in the Albert Campion series, which started with The Crime at Black Dudley (Felony & Mayhem Mysteries) in 1929. This one is dated to the early 1930s, so Campion is still a young adult living in that interval between WWI and WWII that saw society making changes and accommodations necessary after the horrors of The Great War and it's staggering loss of life and fortune. More than anything by the emphasis on the older generations, the book makes it apparent the degree to which society had changed by the time.

The book is filled with Albert's off-the-wall witticisms, which I always enjoy. The unexpected substitution of a single word can make a straight forward statement totally funny. Lugg here has much less of a part in the action than he has in the other books, and he's definitely missed. The characters substituted as Lugg's "Watson" are really not up to the job by comparison. I think the minor changes made by the dramaticists for the BBC/PBS televised version, Campion - The Complete First Season and Campion - The Complete Second Season, which gives Lugg more of a part in the action were well considered and appropriate. Inspector Oates also plays a much larger role in the story than he has in others, and his character has become clearer and more human, a part of the reader's family as opposed to a simple representative of the "Law."

I thoroughly enjoyed the many elderly characters in the book. While each was certainly a "type," they were also individuals, which made them more than mere "paper tigers" to be polished off to further the story. It was rather fun to see an imperious older adult still calling the tune and the "younger" ones acting much like the children that they had probably been. The murders seemed just what one would have anticipated in this tension and frustration filled household, and the dénouement while a surprise was certainly not unexpected. Actually I believe Conan Doyle did a similar story.

The plot is well constructed with twists and turns that serve in lieu of red herrings to misdirect the reader's attention, and though the story is mostly about the older generation and their issues, it is not slow or inactive. The elders might remain spectators because of their limitations, but the sleuths do not.

A wonderful example of Allingham's work.

I think the review title says it all. Allingham is at her best, Albert Campion is at his best. Throw in the "obstinate but delectable" Joyce Blount and Great Aunt Catherine, and you've got a wonderful read. The solution to the mystery fooled me, and, no, I won't say "whodunit."

I enjoyed this book very much, so much that I'm getting all of the books in the series from the first to the last.