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jo845's review against another edition
- Diverse cast of characters? No
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racial slurs, Colonisation, and Drug use
bymeme's review against another edition
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Warning: several instances of racial slurs common in the 1930s. As well as shocking/horrific ideals and treatment of women that were found to be normal and acceptable in the 1930s.
I don't think I'll read the book again because of this.
The thing actually really enjoyed about this book was the return of Lady Amanda Fitton and the chemistry she has with Campion. However, I didn't like how the book didn't really pick up pace until the last third.
I don't think I'll read the book again because of this.
The thing actually really enjoyed about this book was the return of Lady Amanda Fitton and the chemistry she has with Campion. However, I didn't like how the book didn't really pick up pace until the last third.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide, Misogyny, Murder, and Racial slurs
Minor: Rape, Colonisation, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, and Sexual violence
sharkgirl45's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
me2brett's review against another edition
4.0
This was the first Campion novel I've read (besides Crime at the Black Dudley) which wasn't adapted into an episode for the tv series, so this was the first one where I had no previous idea who to suspect or what was going to happen. We meet Campion's sister, whose presence gives us a new insight into the man's character. On the whole an enjoyable mystery, with just the right amount of Lugg and Oates.
bookpossum's review against another edition
3.0
An enjoyable outing with Albert Campion and a caste of mostly over-the-top characters from the worlds of fashion and the theatre.
slferg's review against another edition
5.0
I enjoy these Albert Campion mysteries. I watched them on TV several years ago (probably on PBS from BBC). Albert is an unassuming, quiet man. He is from a titled family which has disowned him and his sister since they have gone out on their own and work and do things not accepted in "the county". He is good friends with Superintendent Oates of Scotland Yard who is very different from him. The mysteries are fun and interesting. In this one, he gets engaged to a girl designing and working at an airplane factory. She is also from a titled family. She joins him to get him to get her boss' mind back on his work and off of an actress. The engagement comes about as an explanation for her presence. And everyone is thrilled about it. But Campion has just found a former fiancee of the actress who has been missing for 3 years - and he is dead. Then, while he's working on other things about the case, the actress' current husband dies. And the actress implicates his sister, a fashion designer. The current interest of the actress is the airplane designer and Amanda's boss, who was involved with Val (Campion's sister) before the actress took notice. Then a model with a marked resemblance to the actress dies. It gets rather sticky.
bev_reads_mysteries's review against another edition
3.0
The Fashion in Shrouds (1938) is another entry in the annals of Margery Allingham's detective, Albert Campion. This time, as the back of the book tells us, we have homicide with style. Fashion is the by-word of the circle where murder strikes. Among these people, the suicide of Richard Portland-Smith [not George Wells as he is identified in the blurb] is old news. But Campion has refused to accept it as passe...and, in fact, has been asked by the man's father to get to the bottom of it. As Campion begins to follow the trail among politicians and the theatre, plane designers and fashion designers, he discovers secrets that may affect his own sister. More deaths follow and soon it becomes a question of which secrets have led to these bizarre murders. Is it adultery? Drugs? Blackmail? Espionage? Or a nice little recipe requiring all those ingredients? Campion takes a bold step in the finale to bring the perpetrator out into the open.
It may just be the state I've been in the last couple days (not feeling well)...but this particular Campion mystery seems just a bit more convoluted than most. And I have to say that I detested (yes, detested) Georgia Wells, the actress, from the moment she stepped into the scene. Someone really needed to slap her a good one early on. The mystery did hold my attention....I just barely got it solved before Campion's final scene. And some of the character interactions were very good. Overall, though, not one of Allingham's best. Good solid mystery. Mostly good characters. A decent, solid read for a three star rating.
It may just be the state I've been in the last couple days (not feeling well)...but this particular Campion mystery seems just a bit more convoluted than most. And I have to say that I detested (yes, detested) Georgia Wells, the actress, from the moment she stepped into the scene. Someone really needed to slap her a good one early on. The mystery did hold my attention....I just barely got it solved before Campion's final scene. And some of the character interactions were very good. Overall, though, not one of Allingham's best. Good solid mystery. Mostly good characters. A decent, solid read for a three star rating.
pkadams's review against another edition
5.0
Another favorite that I reread this week. The fashion set that Allingham describes with the Caesar's Court crowd (think haute couture, dashing industry tycoons, glamorous actresses, producers and minor nobility) gives a modern nod to Thackeray and is just plain enjoyable. I love Campion and Lugg, and think they are at their best in this novel.
marystevens's review against another edition
3.0
Three stars because it's a clever book, just not enjoyable.
But there are saving virtues. Written in 1938, the book gives us a thorough understanding of how the British upper class lived between the Wars and, more interestingly, how women saw themselves then. Torn between a Victorian past and recently gaining suffrage, upper class women engaged in very elaborate even convoluted reasoning about their place in the modern world. This persisted into the 1950's which is what I remember. It's hard to believe we ever thought that way.
The gist of the rather complex plot is that lovers of a stage actress keep dying leaving her free to pursue her most recent Romantic interest. It was a bit of a chore to read. I kept at it so I could get to the solution.
Many readers were put off by the misogyny and racism. Well, that is certainly true but that is how the past was.
But there are saving virtues. Written in 1938, the book gives us a thorough understanding of how the British upper class lived between the Wars and, more interestingly, how women saw themselves then. Torn between a Victorian past and recently gaining suffrage, upper class women engaged in very elaborate even convoluted reasoning about their place in the modern world. This persisted into the 1950's which is what I remember. It's hard to believe we ever thought that way.
The gist of the rather complex plot is that lovers of a stage actress keep dying leaving her free to pursue her most recent Romantic interest. It was a bit of a chore to read. I kept at it so I could get to the solution.
Many readers were put off by the misogyny and racism. Well, that is certainly true but that is how the past was.
mrs_merdle's review against another edition
2.0
This is some pretty incomprehensible nonsense right here. Even ignoring, for the moment, the stomach-turning misogyny (the aforementioned suggestion that a female character needs a “good rape”, and the world’s worst proposal that other readers have mentioned in their reviews), I had a heck of a time just following the plot! A lot of it is dialogue, but much of it is in a sort of demented upper-crust slang: very stilted (who actually proposes with parenthetical asides?) and very much of its time - meaning that even for someone like me, who has read a great deal of 30s detective fiction, it’s very hard to understand. I found many of the characters unlikeable, even Campion, although I did like Amanda (even though she said one of the more incomprehensible sentences in the book: “Sid’s like a dog who’s discovered he’s got his collar on after all.”). The murderer seems to have no motive, and there’s very few, if any, clues to follow. Dorothy L Sayers this is not.