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alysian_fields's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
4.0
hillersg7's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
ginadylan's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
I just kind of think mystery and thrillers are stupid I find it very hard to like them. I thought this plot was original and clever but the portrayal of meg was patronizing and sexist and absolutely no one did any detecting this whole book. Unmemorable characters so the stakes dont feel as high as they should be
maplessence's review against another edition
3.0
3.5★
This is only my second Allingham and is reputed to be her best work.
Based on this I may not go to any extraordinary effort to find any more of this author's works.
The beginning was quite wonderful where we are introduced to the widowed Meg and her new swain Geoffrey.
Allingham in a little note before the book begins says she means London is "The Smoke." But it certainly feels like the "pea-souper" fogs are The Smoke and it becomes almost another character in this book which is set just after World War Two.
Wonderful characters are introduced and there are many vividly written descriptive scenes, but some plot details don't make much sense and there are long periods where the story drags. I didn't have any trouble putting this book aside for days.Above all
A promising idea let down by an untidy execution.
This is only my second Allingham and is reputed to be her best work.
Based on this I may not go to any extraordinary effort to find any more of this author's works.
The beginning was quite wonderful where we are introduced to the widowed Meg and her new swain Geoffrey.
Allingham in a little note before the book begins says she means London is "The Smoke." But it certainly feels like the "pea-souper" fogs are The Smoke and it becomes almost another character in this book which is set just after World War Two.
Wonderful characters are introduced and there are many vividly written descriptive scenes, but some plot details don't make much sense and there are long periods where the story drags. I didn't have any trouble putting this book aside for days.Above all
Spoiler
even Meg's dead husband treats her like a child and, in a letter assumes she will always be a child - so patronisingA promising idea let down by an untidy execution.
offenbach's review against another edition
2.0
Not a fan. This is one of those books you have to pay close attention in order to avoid missing the plot (somehow, important points hare hidden or offered in a backhanded way). Which is fine, but the whole thing has so much extraneous description and unnecessary background that it's exhausting to do so.
Also, the women all seem rather helpless.
Also, the women all seem rather helpless.
tombomp's review against another edition
3.0
The first third or even half of the book promises a lot - there's a lot of threads that hint at interesting connections and the pacing is really good. After that it sort of loses momentum - too much is delivered pure dialogue exposition with limited detective work (and Campion barely features) and although it almost turns into pure thriller it doesn't really have the right pacing. The ending was fine but although I don't think any major plot lines were left hanging it still felt a bit skimpy for some of them. At the same time it was enjoyable and the whole thing did hang together well even with the odd issue or irritating bit
On a sort of "moral" level... it's incredible how little sympathy gets extended to the army veterans in the marching band. It's true that but even outside of that they get scorned and judged both by the narrative voice and the characters themselves. It makes a stark contrast to the dignified nobility of the heroes, who even when they're struggling financially (while, inevitably, it not showing at all) are just Better! Having said that, a major villain in the book who seemingly is from a rough background gets treated kind of weirdly
Spoiler
That section with the old church guy going to confront the vicious murderer alone wasn't bad exactly but the attempts at semi-profound musings didn't really connect at all and it was kind of annoying that they drew heavy attention to the fact that what he was doing was stupid and made no sense... but he did it anyway for some reasonOn a sort of "moral" level... it's incredible how little sympathy gets extended to the army veterans in the marching band. It's true that
Spoiler
their motives are hardly pure, looking to get their hands on the "treasure"Spoiler
Mrs Cash is not only a truly evil and cruel loan shark, she's been aiding and abetting her murdering son (which at least the old church guy probably guessed at before) and she's been doing it seemingly from a *totally free accommodation given to her by the rector*... even though it turns out she was a loan shark to his wife and seemingly even caused her death. Yet he never kicked her out and even at the end when she's arrested it's unclear what exactly she'll be charged with or anything like that. It's hard to explain exactly? There's just a weird contrast.adperfectamconsilium's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
'Mourning is not forgetting,' he said gently, his helplessness vanishing and his voice becoming wise. 'It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the knot.'
This crime thriller was not quite what I expected.
The fog bound London setting is eerily evocative and fits the mood of the story but it feels like a Dickensian drama rather than post World War 2.
Maybe it's intentional to convey the impression that the few years after the Blitz were similar to Victorian England but I did find it odd that I kept thinking I was reading a story based in the late 1800s when in actual fact it was at least fifty years later.
The other thing I found strange was that it was billed as an Albert Campion mystery.
I'd not read a Campion book before but I'm left wondering what the others are like as I got no real sense of who he was from this novel.
He's very much in the background, doesn't seem to detect anything and disappears altogether for parts of the story.
Putting these issues aside it's a well written crime thriller with a decent plot and some interesting characters.
There's also an element of theological philosophy in the story with the main villain, the knife wielding 'Tiger' adhering to a science of luck.
It's quite rightly considered a classic of golden age crime and well worth reading but unfortunately fell short of the high expectations I had for it.
This crime thriller was not quite what I expected.
The fog bound London setting is eerily evocative and fits the mood of the story but it feels like a Dickensian drama rather than post World War 2.
Maybe it's intentional to convey the impression that the few years after the Blitz were similar to Victorian England but I did find it odd that I kept thinking I was reading a story based in the late 1800s when in actual fact it was at least fifty years later.
The other thing I found strange was that it was billed as an Albert Campion mystery.
I'd not read a Campion book before but I'm left wondering what the others are like as I got no real sense of who he was from this novel.
He's very much in the background, doesn't seem to detect anything and disappears altogether for parts of the story.
Putting these issues aside it's a well written crime thriller with a decent plot and some interesting characters.
There's also an element of theological philosophy in the story with the main villain, the knife wielding 'Tiger' adhering to a science of luck.
It's quite rightly considered a classic of golden age crime and well worth reading but unfortunately fell short of the high expectations I had for it.
fictionfan's review against another edition
4.0
Wonderfully atmospheric…
Meg has just become engaged to Geoffrey Levett when she begins to receive photographs which appear to show her previous husband, Major Martin Elginbrodde, who was declared dead during World War One. Now the sender of the photographs has given her a time and place to meet, and Meg has asked family friend Albert Campion and Detective Chief Inspector Charles Luke of the police to accompany her. The police catch the man but he refuses to answer their questions and, having no grounds to hold him, they are forced to release him. Shortly afterwards he is found murdered, and the last person who was seen with him was Geoffrey. Meantime a violent prisoner has escaped from jail, a man named Jack Havoc, whom Luke’s boss, Superintendent Oates, says is one of the only three wholly evil people he has come across in his career. This would appear to be confirmed when three people are found brutally murdered in a lawyer’s office, showing all the signs of Havoc’s modus operandi.
This all takes place in the middle of one of London's famous pea-souper fogs that sometimes lasted for days. Because of these fogs London was nicknamed the Smoke, hence the title of the book. While there is a mystery at the beginning as to the photographs of the Major and why Havoc has chosen this time to break out of prison, we find out the answers to these questions fairly early on, and most of the book is really in the form of a thriller. Allingham uses the fog and some great characterisation to create a wonderfully threatening atmosphere and some truly tense suspense which kept me turning the pages long into the night.
It soon becomes clear that a group of men are involved, who have turned themselves into a band to busk the streets in order to scrape a living, though again for a long time we don’t know exactly what their involvement is. Some of the men are ex-Army, each of them has some kind of disability or deformity, and they are all led by the rather terrifying Tiddy Doll, himself an albino. I doubt a modern writer could or would use disability in the way Allingham does, to create a really creepy atmosphere reminiscent of freak shows in horror novels, so a reader has to be prepared to make allowances for the time of writing. It is, however, very effective, and serves as a reminder of how many men came back from war damaged physically or mentally.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Albert Campion and therefore I was quite happy that he plays a rather low-key role in this one, mostly because the mystery element isn’t huge. This also means that his loyal henchman (aka dogsbody) Magersfontein Lugg has very little presence on the page, and for that I’m devoutly thankful. Allingham’s horribly snobbish portrayal of Lugg as the common working-class servant, complete with comedy name and accent, devoted to his upper-class master, is one of the major reasons Allingham and I don’t get along as well as I’d like.
Instead, in the first two thirds or so, we mostly follow Geoff as he gets himself into deep peril, and Inspector Luke as he and his men try to catch up with Havoc. The tension wafts from the page in these scenes, and they are undoubtedly as thrilling as anything I’ve come across in crime fiction, old or new. Because of the air of horror, it reminded me a little of the atmosphere of decadence and Grand Guignol that John Dickson Carr creates in his early Bencolin novels.
The book was heading straight for the five-star bracket at this stage, but for me the main climax came too early, and the last section of the book felt needlessly long-drawn out. I haven’t mentioned Meg’s saintly father, Canon Avril, who has surrounded himself with various waifs and strays who form a kind of extended family (mostly of working-class people devoted to upper-class Canon Avril and Meg, but never mind). In the final section Allingham indulges in a, to me, rather tedious, lengthy theological discussion on what Havoc calls “the Science of Luck” and Avril refers to as “the Pursuit of Death”. Frankly I had no idea what it was about and cared even less. In practice it seemed to mean that Havoc felt luck comes to those who look for opportunities. Anyway it takes over in the final few chapters, dictating Havoc’s actions which become progressively unbelievable, as do Canon Avril’s. I’d rather authors stuck to showing good battling evil rather than pontificating about it, especially in religious terms.
I’ve swithered over a rating, and decided that sadly I can only give it four. Had it ended differently it would have been a five for sure, for the earlier excellently atmospheric thriller elements.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Meg has just become engaged to Geoffrey Levett when she begins to receive photographs which appear to show her previous husband, Major Martin Elginbrodde, who was declared dead during World War One. Now the sender of the photographs has given her a time and place to meet, and Meg has asked family friend Albert Campion and Detective Chief Inspector Charles Luke of the police to accompany her. The police catch the man but he refuses to answer their questions and, having no grounds to hold him, they are forced to release him. Shortly afterwards he is found murdered, and the last person who was seen with him was Geoffrey. Meantime a violent prisoner has escaped from jail, a man named Jack Havoc, whom Luke’s boss, Superintendent Oates, says is one of the only three wholly evil people he has come across in his career. This would appear to be confirmed when three people are found brutally murdered in a lawyer’s office, showing all the signs of Havoc’s modus operandi.
This all takes place in the middle of one of London's famous pea-souper fogs that sometimes lasted for days. Because of these fogs London was nicknamed the Smoke, hence the title of the book. While there is a mystery at the beginning as to the photographs of the Major and why Havoc has chosen this time to break out of prison, we find out the answers to these questions fairly early on, and most of the book is really in the form of a thriller. Allingham uses the fog and some great characterisation to create a wonderfully threatening atmosphere and some truly tense suspense which kept me turning the pages long into the night.
It soon becomes clear that a group of men are involved, who have turned themselves into a band to busk the streets in order to scrape a living, though again for a long time we don’t know exactly what their involvement is. Some of the men are ex-Army, each of them has some kind of disability or deformity, and they are all led by the rather terrifying Tiddy Doll, himself an albino. I doubt a modern writer could or would use disability in the way Allingham does, to create a really creepy atmosphere reminiscent of freak shows in horror novels, so a reader has to be prepared to make allowances for the time of writing. It is, however, very effective, and serves as a reminder of how many men came back from war damaged physically or mentally.
I’ve never been a huge fan of Albert Campion and therefore I was quite happy that he plays a rather low-key role in this one, mostly because the mystery element isn’t huge. This also means that his loyal henchman (aka dogsbody) Magersfontein Lugg has very little presence on the page, and for that I’m devoutly thankful. Allingham’s horribly snobbish portrayal of Lugg as the common working-class servant, complete with comedy name and accent, devoted to his upper-class master, is one of the major reasons Allingham and I don’t get along as well as I’d like.
Instead, in the first two thirds or so, we mostly follow Geoff as he gets himself into deep peril, and Inspector Luke as he and his men try to catch up with Havoc. The tension wafts from the page in these scenes, and they are undoubtedly as thrilling as anything I’ve come across in crime fiction, old or new. Because of the air of horror, it reminded me a little of the atmosphere of decadence and Grand Guignol that John Dickson Carr creates in his early Bencolin novels.
The book was heading straight for the five-star bracket at this stage, but for me the main climax came too early, and the last section of the book felt needlessly long-drawn out. I haven’t mentioned Meg’s saintly father, Canon Avril, who has surrounded himself with various waifs and strays who form a kind of extended family (mostly of working-class people devoted to upper-class Canon Avril and Meg, but never mind). In the final section Allingham indulges in a, to me, rather tedious, lengthy theological discussion on what Havoc calls “the Science of Luck” and Avril refers to as “the Pursuit of Death”. Frankly I had no idea what it was about and cared even less. In practice it seemed to mean that Havoc felt luck comes to those who look for opportunities. Anyway it takes over in the final few chapters, dictating Havoc’s actions which become progressively unbelievable, as do Canon Avril’s. I’d rather authors stuck to showing good battling evil rather than pontificating about it, especially in religious terms.
I’ve swithered over a rating, and decided that sadly I can only give it four. Had it ended differently it would have been a five for sure, for the earlier excellently atmospheric thriller elements.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com