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A review by deegee24
Police at the Funeral by Margery Allingham
4.0
Of all the classic detective fiction writers of the so-called Golden Age in Britain (1920s-1930s), Margery Allingham is definitely the best. Unlike the great Raymond Chandler, she doesn't try to "elevate" the genre, she subtly and self-consciously undermines its conventions. Her prose style is somewhat unassuming, but very pleasant and versatile.
"Police at the Funeral" is not quite the mature Allingham, but it is still much more memorable and less dated than the average whodunit by Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers. The solution to the mystery in the last 30 pages is preposterous, but playfully so. And the characters are so well drawn and given such rich dialogue and dramatic interplay that the question of "whodunit" is almost beside the point. Interestingly, Allingham's amateur detective, an aristocratic adventurer named Albert Campion, is not an uncanny genius like Sherlock Holmes or Poirot. He has a few brilliant insights and has no qualms about using his fists when necessary, like Sam Spade. But solving the mystery is a team effort.
"Police at the Funeral" is not quite the mature Allingham, but it is still much more memorable and less dated than the average whodunit by Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers. The solution to the mystery in the last 30 pages is preposterous, but playfully so. And the characters are so well drawn and given such rich dialogue and dramatic interplay that the question of "whodunit" is almost beside the point. Interestingly, Allingham's amateur detective, an aristocratic adventurer named Albert Campion, is not an uncanny genius like Sherlock Holmes or Poirot. He has a few brilliant insights and has no qualms about using his fists when necessary, like Sam Spade. But solving the mystery is a team effort.