A review by girlwithherheadinabook
Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham

3.0

In my final semester at university, I studied an English module on the 1940s - it was amazing. It also came with a fairly hefty supplementary reading list which as a reading enthusiast I am still slowly working my way through. Traitor's Purse was one of these which I grabbed from the pile when I had a long train journey up to Scotland - a spy story set and published during the 1940s. It was a strange experience reading it now, two years post-graduation. Odd snippets from the module kept springing to mind, such as the boom in crime and specifically spy literature during the 1940s - people read a lot during this period. When you think about it, living in a world of total war, escapism would be pretty appealing.

This novel comes from the Albert Campion series, a detective hero who I have to admit I had never heard of before. This book is number 11 from his adventures which is odd because for the first part of the novel, he has no idea who he is so I imagined that this book represented his 'origins'. It's a very English sort of story with very conservative sensabilities. Now that I've finished it, I've passed it on to my Dad, it's his sort of book. I enjoyed it but I don't know if I'll be rushing out to buy more Albert Campion - he's not what you would describe as a warm and cuddly protagonist.

For my full review:
http://girlwithherheadinabook.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/traitors-purse-margery-allingham.html