A review by sarahmatthews
The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham

tense medium-paced

The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham

Read on audio

Narrator: Paul Scott for RNIB Talking Books

Pub. 1952,224pp

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This is my 4th Margery Allingham novel and her most famous. It’s taken me a while to get to as I’d picked out a few set in the art and fashion worlds first.

The opening is typically intriguing, with a young girl,Meg, on her way to meet Albert Campion (a family friend) and Detective Chief Inspector Luke, to try to get to the bottom of a mystery surrounding her late husband who was killed in the war. Photographs of him have emerged leading her to question her recent engagement to Geoffrey Levitt. She thinks she spots him and the police give chase, picking up an impersonator complete with false moustache. Once they’ve questioned and released him, Geoffrey tracks him down and tries to find out more information but he doesn’t get very far as the inpersonator, Duds, flees. Later, Duds turns up dead and Geoffrey goes missing.

Separately, a string of murders are committed on the same day, following the jail break of a notorious criminal, Jack Havoc, known as the Tiger. London is in the midst of a thick ‘pea souper’ fog which has aided his escape, and he has a gang of ex-servicemen waiting to help him on the outside.

The atmosphere in London after the murders is very uneasy and excellently portrayed:

“If the fog had only cleared, tempers might have cooled but now, at the end of the second day, it had become the father of fogs, thicker and dirtier, and more exasperating than any in living memory. The only people who were not astounded by it were visiting Americans who innocently supposed the capital to know no other weather, and took it’s inconvenience in their good natured stride. Everybody else was affronted and nervous. In the streets, passers by walked quickly, hugging the lights. Children were hurried home from school, doors which were never locked in daytime were fastened by lunch, and men were glad to see company in club and pub. Business at theatre box offices fell abruptly, and the outgoing suburban trains were crowded from four o’clock on. No one talked of anything else.”

The characters are all vividly written, especially Jack Havoc and the Canon Avril, and Allingham’s sense of place and tension building are wonderful. The menacing atmosphere is effectively evoked, with some masterful turns of phrase, and the story becomes more of a thriller than a mystery as we know who’s behind the murders early on. 

The issue for me came with some of the pacing. I was puzzled for a long time about what on earth was happening, and there was a lengthy section about a kidnap that went on and on, and I began to wonder why I was meant to care. 

Also, as with many mystery writers of the Golden Age, Margery Allingham is guilty of some very outdated stereotypes. In this book it’s the familiar trope of disabilities being equated with evil, with Havoc’s men, all of whom are disabled, being depicted in the manner of a freak show. Perhaps the band reflects the fact that many servicemen were left traumatised and disabled after the war, and grouped together to survive, sometimes resorting to begging or crime, but it wasn’t easy to read from a 21st century perspective.

Overall a tense and atmospheric read that perfectly captures post war London.

I read this as part of Karen and Simon’s #1952Club reading event.