Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Welcome to my third review for the #1937 club, which is hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings.

1937 was awash with great Golden Age Detective fiction, and our third pick is from one of the four, ‘Queens of Crime’ Margery Allingham. Her amateur detective, Albert Campion, returns in his eighth adventure, The Case of the Late Pig, with his feckless manservant Lugg in tow as they investigate the death of Campion’s old school bully, “Pig” Peters.

The Case of the Late Pig by Margery Allingham

Bright and early one January morning, Campion’s manservant Lugg, who is trying to improve servant-master relations between the two, is reading the obituaries aloud to Campion, who is doing his best to ignore this mind-improving exercise.

However, Campion perks up when Lugg reads the obituary of one R.I. Peters, Campion’s nemesis and tormenter during his school days. The porky Peters was ungraciously nicknamed “Pig” by Campion, and the moniker couldn’t fit the wearer any better. Peters is dead, and along with the death notice in the paper, Campion receives a flowery note, which is obscure in nature, but he interprets it as a cryptic request to attend the funeral of Peters. Campion obliges, happy to see his bully finally one with the dirt and worms.

The funeral is a strange affair. There are only a few mourners: the girl who loved him, an estranged older relation, and another school chum who also received the same flowery note. It’s over in a flash, and before the day ends, Pig Peters is forgotten by everyone who knows him.

Five months later, his friend Sir Leo summons him to Hightower to investigate the death of one of his guests, Harris. Harris’s death looks accidental on the surface. A gigantic flower urn falls from the roof and squashes his head in, but he is disliked in the village for swindling the current owner of Hightower, Poppy, who is Sir Leo’s beloved.

Upon seeing Harris’s body, Campion is bewildered because he is sure that it’s actually Peters. He must discover who was buried that day in January and who killed Peters down at Hightower. The village is crawling with the few mourners who came to the earlier funeral, and Campion is unsure who was in on the earlier decision and who wanted him dead.

The investigation into Peter’s murder leads to a stolen body, a blackmailer killed and trussed up like a macabre scarecrow, and the poisoning and attempted murder of Lugg before the killer is unmasked.

The Review

I am not a fan of the Albert Campion series, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I thoroughly enjoyed The Case of the Late Pig. Having Campion as the narrator all the difference, the book trundled along sensibly; I enjoyed understanding his investigative process, his flashes of temper, and his general exasperation at the many lying and conniving characters that populate this book. Albert Campion finally felt like a person instead of a puppet on a string that Allingham had doing the most inexplicable things for her own amusement so she could titter “silly ass” a thousand times a page.

Unfortunately, this is the only Campion book written from his point of view. I really enjoyed reading his thoughts as the never-ending bodies who may or may not be Peters find their way to a tiny country village in England and how he is both baffled and increasingly unnerved as the crimes get more bizarre and violent. We get to see him figure out how the giant planter was moved without anyone touching it, and he slowly gropes his way toward getting the killer in his clutches, which happens in an all-and-out brawl.

I liked Campion being more physically imposing and sharp-tongued. He’s genteel enough but unwilling to get into scraps, especially when his beloved Lugg is lured into a deadly trap.

I loved the constant bickering and skirmishes between Campion and Lugg, which are partially borne out of their differing classes and their varied personalities. Campion, a bit henpecked and scatterbrained, needs the stout and occasionally loutish to bring Campion firmly into hand occasionally. Lugg, who comes off brutish and taciturn in other Campion novels, is given an actual soft center- he’s gruff and proud but never a brute, as Allingham leads the readers to believe in other books.

I also enjoyed how this nontraditional country house party stays true to Allingham’s more gothic and dark themes with plenty of body horror but doesn’t stray into lengthy, discursive, melodramatic asides. Each character is well-defined without too much verbose background or meanderings. The Case of the Late Pig is a tight mystery that can be read in a quick 90 minutes; finding out the identity of the corpses doesn’t lead to another half-shadowed mystery. It’s rather narrow-minded for Allingham, who usually uses this case as the opening teaser for a more convoluted and wacky adventure.

I like that the wackiness is nonexistent, and Campion’s quirks are no more than Lord Peter Whimsy. He’s grounded in reality, investigating a murder with relatively straightforward frankness. I think fans of Allingham’s usual style will find The Case of the Late Pig a little bland and almost too safe compared to her usual fare, but I really loved it.