http://www.thecwa.co.uk/index.php

The Gold Dagger went to Belinda Bauer for Blacklands. Yvonne wasn’t too impressed when she reviewed this for rte….

http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=8347

and it is not a book I want to read. I think this is now a hackneyed theme, though I fear it is exactly the type of book which is likely to win the Dagger (as it has done of course!).

The New Writer Dagger was won by Ryan David Jahn for Acts of Violence which is on my TBR shelf.

Val McDermid got the Diamond (Lifetime Achievement) Dagger and Arianna Franklin won the Library Dagger (judged by librarians – I quite like Franklin’s work but surely there are better writers than this around?).

The biggest surprise to me was Foyle winning the People’s Detective – this is voted for by the public and he was up against Poirot/Marple/Holmes/Frost/Barnaby/Wexford/Lewis/Morse et al. It shows that there is an enormous public attachment to Foyle (which is why ITV had to reverse their decision to cancel the show of course).”

This led to some discussion and Philip contributed the fruits of his own research…..

“This news comes just after I was futzing around last night checking up on previous CWA “Dagger” winners, and found some interesting trivia about past
winners –

The Award was first established as the “Crossed Red Herring Award” in 1955 and renamed the Gold Dagger in 1960 – the Silver Dagger was instituted in
1969.

Ruth Rendell is the current “Dagger” Champion – 4 Gold Daggers (A DEMON IN MY VIEW, LIVE FLESH, A FATAL INVERSION, KING SOLOMON’S CARPET) and 1 Silver Dagger – TREE OF HANDS.

Lionel Davidson is the Gold Dagger runner-up, with three THE NIGHT OF WENCESLAS, A LONG WAY TO SHILOH, THE CHELSEA MURDERS (Davidson’s output
wasn’t huge, less than a dozen novels, which makes his 3 wins quite an achievement).

P.D. James has won three Silver Daggers, for SHROUD FOR A NIGHTINGALE, THE BLACK TOWER, and A TASTE FOR DEATH (which lost the Gold to Ruth Rendell’s LIVE FLESH!) but she has not won a Gold Dagger!

John le Carré has won two Gold Daggers – THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD and THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY.

Peter Lovesey has won 1 Gold Dagger (THE FALSE INSPECTOR DEW) and 3 Silver Daggers (WAXWORK, THE SUMMONS, and BLOODHOUNDS).

There have been two winners of consecutive Gold Daggers: Peter Dickinson in 1968 (SKIN DEEP) and 1969 (A PRIDE OF HEROES), and Ruth Rendell for LIVE
FLESH (1986) and A FATAL INVERSION (her second Barbara Vine novel), 1987.

One prominent name in mystery fiction is missing from the Dagger winners, and it happens to be the same name that’s missing from the list of MWA Edgar
winners – AGATHA CHRISTIE. One can argue that by the time these awards were started – the mid-1950s – Christie had been around so long that she was
taken for granted (much as Rendell and James now seem to be), and that her best work was behind her, though at least three novels she wrote during
these later years – ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, THE PALE HORSE, and ENDLESS NIGHT, were certainly worthy of consideration.”

This led me to doing some further investigation. The early years of the Daggers can only be described as an embarrassment. Here are the first awards…

Now let me pose some ‘rivals’ -

•                 1965 : Dover 2 – Joyce Porter
•                 1964 : Dover 1 – Joyce Porter
•                 1962 : Cover Her Face - P.D.James
•                  1961: Silence Observed - Michael Innes
•                 1959 : False Scent - Ngaio Marsh
•                  1958 : Hide My Eyes - Margery Allingham                 
•                  1956 : Dead Man’s Folly - Agatha Christie
•                  1955 : Scales of Justice - Ngaio Marsh

I have excluded 1963 as Le Carre is certainly a deserving winner (though whether he truly belongs to the mystery genre is a moot point!). I have also excluded any year where there is not an obvious classic as an alternative, and done extremely little research! I think however that my point is proved with fairly devastating accuracy (if I say so myself!). Now it may be objected that I have not actually read any of the winners. This is true. But I am fairly confident in the judgement of history. That is to say that if any of these books were deserving of being remembered and cherished in the way that Marsh, Christie, Allingham, Innes, James and Porter (albeit in different degrees) are, then they would be. No, I think one can with  complete confidence that the early years of the Dagger are a complete and utter embarrassment.

The list of winners continues by and large to be a list of the totally forgotten until 1976. Yes we have one silver Dagger (a second place – abandoned in 2005) for James but that is about it. In 1976 Rendell wins the first of her three (for A Demon in My View) and from that point onwards the awards go, in almost all cases, to well-known names. Quite what led to this switch I have no idea of knowing but it would be fascinating to discover. I am not saying that I would always agree with the awards (indeed I am positive that I would not, especially as Hill only won once!) but they cease to be absurd. And the names, at least from the early part, have survived at least 30 years or so. Whether people will still be reading Rendell or Hill or Walters in 80 years as Christie and Marsh and Allingham are read today is unknowable: personally I think they will because generally quality survives. In fact it is only in the last few years that the Awards have once again sometimes become obscure. My suspicion would be that the CWA favours books and writers whom it thinks have literary merit, because literary acclaim seems to be what many of them hanker after.

The Debut Mystery Dagger (now called the John Creasey Dagger), which has been going in one form or another since 1973, is fascinating since it is possible to judge the accuracy of the award not on the basis of how good a particular book was, but on the basis of the writer’s subsequent career. The record is patchy at best which perhaps is not surprising ( I am sure my choices might prove equally erroneous). Excellent spots have been Andrew Taylor, Patricia Cornwall, Walter Mosley, Minette Walters, Janet Evanovich, Denise Mina, Louise Penny. Some writers produced excellent little sequences but have subsequently disappeared (Liza Cody, Robert Richardson, Janet Neel).  But the majority I have never heard of. There is however an inherent problem here in that some people only have one good book in them and it proves to be the first; on the other hand many writers take quite a time to get into their swing – Marsh and Allingham instantly spring to my mind as Greats who would not have won any prizes for their first books.

The Diamond Dagger Award for Lifetime Achievement was only inaugurated in 1986 and therefore excludes many of the GA greats – but quite fantastically it was never awarded to Michael Innes who died in 1994. This is scarcely believable and is the most horrific and egregious of all the many blunders which the CWA have made. Frankly none of the names on the list can hold a candle to Innes. This is not to say that it is not, in the main, a list of the great and good (and most commercial) mystery writers of the past 25 years, especially on the British side of the Atlantic. I suspect Lionel Davidson’s inclusion would puzzle most but as they gave him 3 Gold Awards they probably felt he deserved a Diamond (I think I will have to read some of his work).

Interestingly the Dagger which seems to me to make most sense at a first glance is the Ellis Peters Historical. This has only been going since 1999 and I do know nearly every name and have read several of the particular books.

I have tried to be as fair as possible in my assessment of the Daggers. Their early history, which is lamentable, has, to some extent, been redeemed over recent years. But there is still a feeling, when one looks at these lists of winners, of disrespect for the great foremothers and forefathers on whose shoulders today’s writers stand. The omission of Innes when alive ;the overlooking of Allingham, Christie, Marsh when they were writing; these are merely the most prominent examples. I have not researched many other decease dates, or publication dates, to see who else was overlooked. I think it is high time that the CWA did something about this and acknowledged its heritage. It would be a simple matter to institute a Platinum Dagger for any deceased writer whose contribution to the genre is now recognised as massive.

Finally a personal gripe: the one writer whose exclusion from any sort of award astonishes me is Ellroy. I am not outraged as I am over Innes but I still find it extraordinary!

Jeffrey Deaver is one of those best-selling American mystery writers whom I had I never read before and therefore The Twelfth Card, at a minimum, fills a gap in my knowledge. In fact I found it quite a surprising book.

The Twelfth Card is the 6th book in the Lincoln Rhyme series. Rhyme’s distinguishing feature is that he is a paraplegic. All his complex forensic investigations therefore have to be conducted from home, although he has a troop of co-workers who assist him, and engage in what might be called field operations. Chief among these is his partner Amelia Sachs. In this particular case a schoolgirl, Geneva Settle, is the target of a ruthless and brilliant professional assassin. Rhyme and his team’s task is to work out why Geneva is being targeted, catch the assassin and protect Geneva.

The surprise to which I referred is that The Twelfth Card (and I know no reason why it should not be treated as reasonably typical of Deaver’s writing) is very technique heavy. I do not mean by this forensic techniques, though there are certainly an abundance of those : an abundance I found tiresome as I always do find forensics tiresome and otiose (and I am not making any point about a modern trend here – the very great Ngaio Marsh’s books become tiresome when, as they almost invariably do, they become forensic). No, it is to the techniques of mystery writing that I refer, and it was those which I was not expecting. Deaver has a whole battery of tricks at his disposal and he puts them to very considerable use. Time and time again the reader is completely mislead. This is repeatedly true of the main plot-line – there are a number of false endings – but also of various sub-plots. Achieving these effects requires great discipline and precise control of the use of language. Deaver pulls off his tricks again and again so that the reader is never really on certain ground. Specific examples would obviously constitute Spoilers, but in general the tendency of the tricks is towards false identities – our perception of a particular character is shown to be completely wrong. But they can also be situations and the most memorable of all for me comprises one such: it is a reversal of expectations which genuinely stunned me. In fact it is these various surprises which keep the reader constantly on the back foot which are ultimately far more satisfying than the genuine revelation of the book’s main plot. Not that the latter is unsatisfactory; it has a delightfully political edge to it and ties in very nicely to some themes Deaver has been working on through the book. Because another aspect of the plot is the fact that it appears the attempts on Geneva’s life may be connected to research she was carrying out on one of her ancestors, Charles Singleton a freed slave, and what happened to him in 1868.

In fact Deaver disguises the fact that this book is above all a technical feat with various overlaying features. We have the already discussed forensics. But there is also a fair amount of history, a fair amount of sociology (of Harlem in particular here), and various characters sub-stories ,most importantly Geneva’s with some lengthy scenes from her high-school life. All of these are competent enough but they tend to be either somewhat arid or, in the case of the last, a bit forced. And I would certainly not want to pretend that The Twelfth Card is without weaknesses. The  prose is bland, the psychology fairly rudimentary and the characterisation average. Yet for all that such is Deaver’s mastery of mystery technique, which is demonstrated again and again, I have to admit that almost against my will I was impressed. I had not expected anything like this and encountering a writer who is genuinely in command of techniques does impress me. It might be argued that the book is somewhat soulless, as even the happy endings feel somewhat of an exercise in technique ; even as they worked on me I was aware of the writer’s intentions to make them work. That may sound absurd so let me re-phrase it. When I feel that technique is being used for the purpose of manipulating my emotions I generally (not always, but generally) become resistant to it. However when technique is being used for purely mystery purposes – not to manipulate the emotion but to lead to shock, surprise, ‘didn’t see that one coming!’, – I am very happy about it. Because these techniques are fact central to the genre. I bang on so often about their absence in much modern-day mystery writing, about the absence of technique, that it would be churlish indeed for me not to applaud when I find a writer who has the whole box of tricks. I am not saying I will rush out and read more Deaver – he is not either weighty or entertaining enough for that – but I would certainly not be averse to reading more.

Very fairly someone on the BritishMysteries list put me on the spot by asking me what I would put in the ‘highest rank of the Hill canon’. That needed a bit of thinking about but I came up with the following….

“I think my list of the books in the ‘highest rank’ of the Hill canon are as follows (in chronological order)….

Exit Lines
UnderWorld
Bones and Silence
Recalled to Life
Pictures of Perfection
The Wood Beyond
On Beulah Height
Arms and the Woman
Dialogues of the Dead
Death’s Jest Book
A Cure for All Diseases

I tried to get it down to 10 but could not do so! It goes almost without saying that all these are in the Dalziel and Pascoe series : much as I have liked some on the other books I don’t think they have ever quite challenged DandP. This is not necessarily a list of all my favourites (An April Shroud would be there if it were), but it does include my personal absolute favourite (Pictures of Perfection). Many would disagree with this list which is heavily weighted in favour of Hill’s most literary efforts (Pictures, Arms, Dialogues, Death’s, Cure) but then that is the side of Hill which I most love, which no living writer comes close to matching (or at least none I have ever read or heard of), and which is most individual. But for some people this is just what they dislike about Hill – it is a matter of taste. After all Pictures is really a lovely shaggy dog story – although it has a hard political edge – and some people do not really consider that as the most desirable feature of a mystery!

Thanks for making me think about this – of course what I really need to do is to go back and re-read every book…………….”

I subsequently added….

“I should have added that there are no books in the DandP series which I dislike but if I had to pick the weakest and my least favourite (I think they do coincide here) it would definitely be Ruling Passion. Although even there who knows if I re-read it  ?:)”

The discussion was started by Christine who asked…

>>One of the things I love about the Campion stories is the vividness of all of the characters, except perhaps Albert himself. His motivation for doing things isn’t always clear. In the early books he comes across as a bit of an adventurer. In the later books he wonders a bit why he does what he does when the police do much of it so much better. Justice isn’t a compulsion. In fact, in addition to wondering about the motivation for the villains in the books, I’d be interested to know what people think about Albert’s motivation in each of the novels. Fun, profit, duty, chivalry? It is by no means uniform. Is there a thread that takes us from the beginning to the end?

I replied….

>>Another great and fascinating question. My broad and simplistic answer is that there isn’t really any such thread – or only in terms of externals anyway. Albert as a character is almost constantly evolving and his motivations change. I think – Roger will correct me here – you could probably only argue profit in Black Dudley? Fun in lots of the early thrillers. Duty certainly – and patriotism too (Traitors Purse for instance). Intellectual fascination. But you could probably examine each book and come up with a somewhat different answer.<<

Beth added….

>>I always felt that Campion’s motivation was the subconscious need to be needed; that he slipped into a niche by being clever and found out that not only was he good at it but he liked it as well. With his connections he was always able to help one of his mother’s friends or a distant relative in a quiet way and so gained a reputation that reinforced his hobby into a way of life as opposed to a profession or job.

and Christine responded…

>>Campion is pretty clear early on that he needs to earn a living. Later in The Beckoning Lady tells Luke that he has a “private practice” of sorts, which suggests that he certainly considers himself to be a professional. I think in Pearls Before Swine he alludes to Nidd as his home (clearly an estate) and it appears that the death of his older brother somewhere along the line (can’t remember the book) left him heir to a title that is never referenced (except perhaps obscurely by Lugg at one point?). I have to admit, some of this I remember from the books and some I probably remember from articles written by folks who are probably on this list. In any event, unlike some gentlemen sleuths Campion started out with a need to earn money and may have finished as someone who could view his work as more of a hobby if he chose. All along the way, there are different things that drive him. In some cases it is love or affection. In some cases, patriotism or loyalty to old friends. In some cases, his services appear to have been engaged. Is anyone interested in trying to catalog his motivation? Collectively or individually?

Elizabeth queried…

>>I wonder whether one of his motivations is a sense of responsibility – even at his most silly ass, in Black Dudley, it seems quite evident. But perhaps that is a quality rather than a motivation.<<

and Duncan added…

>>I am still working my way through them and read them as I find them which means I have not read them chronologically, but at the beginning of Death of the Undertaker I think Campion is really quite reluctant to get dragged in and only when three moons align does he accept somehow that it is his fate. Similarly in
Coroners Pidgin he is very reluctant after his long stint abroad. According to Wikipedia these two are published 1945 and 1948 – the first two after the war.
In Death of a Ghost (1934 according to the mighty Wikipedia) I seem to remember there is never any doubt at all and there is clearly a duty involved. Does the war change something in Campion / Allingham? Probably a silly question, I’m sure it does, more to the point what effect does the war have on Campion’s motivations?<

to which I replied…

>>Oh unquestionably Duncan. Traitors Purse is an absolutely key book in Albert’s development – and the amnesiac device, the reconstruction of his identity is a brilliant coup which enables this. Albert matures in very sense – emotionally, intellectually, morally. I think he is always more hesitant in subsequent books, more self-questioning, often reluctant.<

Christine came back……

>>In Death of A Ghost, it is Campion’s sense of personal loyalty to Belle that not only motivates his involvement but drives him to take a tremendous risk to resolve the matter. I agree that Pearls Before Swine (which I think is the US title of Coroner’s Pidgin) presents a case where he doesn’t want to be involved at all. It starts out as a simple death of a woman under unsavory circumstances. It might not even be murder. But it is his flat. And it is his old retainer Lugg. So a sense of personal loyalty and a desire not to run afoul of the police keeps him in London and keeps him involved. Only then when the deeper currents reveal themselves does the patriotism angle creep in. More Work for the Undertaker, I think, finds him questioning his “job” since, post war, he has been presented with an opportunity to “go straight” and take a post fitting for a man with his family connections. It is really his curiosity and his love of the game that motivates him then.So I guess I don’t see an evolution of a motive for his detection. Rather, I see an evolution of the person. Am I agreeing with Nick and Roger?<<

and Roger summed it all up….

>>That sounds right to me, Christine! Albert Campion is one of the very few series detectives who not only age, but develop and mature.<<

Jennifer has already pointed out that………..

 The book also raises some interesting thoughts about adoption, genetics and environment etc, as well as other sorts of ‘social engineering’, in the post-war era!  

The book is engaged and contemporary, while still developing perennial themes and subjects. The Kinnit household itself reminds us of so many other strange houses and households, usually of a very non-nuclear variety, which have appeared in the books from Police at the Funeral onwards. Again we have patriarchal and matriarchal figures; again we have an immensely strong use of location and atmosphere.    

But as Jennifer says the book’s central concern and theme is with the ancient question of nature v nurture ; the mystery of Timothy’s parentage forms the subject of both the book’s plot and its theme. ”It never pays to take a youngster out of his normal environment and bring him up in something plushy” the unpleasant Joe Stalkey claims.    

The subject is so deeply and finely enmeshed into the book’s plot and substance that it is almost impossible to extract any specific details. We should perhaps note though that it would seem that Allingham tends to come down on the nature side of the argument. She does so in a characteristically quirky and individual way. Timothy’s real father – Councillor Cornish, the book’s outstanding creation – is, in fact, in every way, but especially morally, superior to the man he thought was his father (Eustace Kinnit). In this book there are no spotless heroes but the Kinnits are exposed as fraudulent shams. So, if Timothy starts out questioning whether his character is a mere veneer of nurture, he ends up understanding that the essential goodness of his nature (genes) has not been affected by nurture in a very odd household (Mrs Broome notwithstanding). The book’s ending, with Councillor Cornish speaking of his first wife (Timothy’s mother), is decisive on this point.   

Cornish’s own (Socialist or Labour – old Labour – at least) belief in nurture and his guilt about his supposed, abandoned son are therefore held to be false. Luke, speaking here I think for Allingham, is clear and wishes to disabuse him of this. I should say that I am on the opposite side of the fence to Allingham on the fundamentals of this question, but that does not prevent me from appreciating how skilfully she weaves her subject matter into the book and its central mystery.    

I am merely skimming the surface and one could probe and analyse the book at length which is, in itself, proof of its value and weight.   
One light note though. Allingham refers to Campion here (p71 of the Penguin) as ‘a natural goon’. This is the first such reference I have noted ; the Goons were by 1963 long past their hey-day but would certainly have been household figures. I am sure Roger will help here. One wonders which she had in mind? Certainly not Secombe. This leaves us with Sellars and Milligan. My own preference would certainly be for Milligan and that anarchic element but perhaps later identification of Sellars with Clouseau prevents one taking him seriously in this connection.  

On the final point Roger replied……  

I wish I’d asked Joyce Allingham about this, because it’s puzzled me as well. My feeling – gut feeling, if you like – is that Marge didn’t specifically mean the Goons of The Goon Show. I’m sure I remember that in her introduction to the first (British) Allingham Omnibus, ‘The Mysterious Mr Campion’, she says that Albert represented the favourite joke-figure of the nineteen-twenties, ‘the zany or goon’. The word was in use then, and was popularised originally, as my wife Jean reminds me, by the character of Alice the Goon in the Popeye comic strips (and later cartoon films). During the Second World War the word was used by British POWs in referring to the German prison guards, so Margery Allingham and people of her generation had been familiar with the word ‘goon’ since well before Milligan and co. created The Goon Show.   

*************************************************************

On the nature/nurture debate Jennifer wrote…..  

Councillor Cornish is horrified when ‘evil’ rears its ugly head the brave new model high-rise flats, because, like the Victorians, he believed (wanted to believe?) that a fine environment would eradicate the ‘evil’ he had ‘seen’ (or rather interpreted what he had seen as being) in the pre-war district as a young man.    

On the other side of this nature versus nurture debate, I can recall my parents talking in the early 1960s about an elderly traditionalist clergyman – otherwise a delightful and very humane man – advising a young man whose antecedents were unknown, and who had been brought up from babyhood in a children’s home, not to marry, because he could not know what ‘hereditary taint’ there might be in his ancestry. He had obviously been influenced by the ‘eugenics’ movement rather than by the great Victorian social pioneers (I grew up near Saltaire, Sir Titus Salt’s model village for his mill workers, and near the edge of one of Bradford’s huge, brave new post-war housing estates, built to bring new life to the transposed ‘slum’ dwellers, a stark contrast to the clergyman’s views).   

I think most of Allingham’s writings actually suggest a strong belief in the power of the genes. As a very blessed adoptive parent of four, I’d say it was about 60% genes and 40% environment, but that’s a very crude and obviously a personal estimate.   

I will have to think this over but am sure you are right based on the evidence of The China Governess. One case where it does not seem to apply however
is that of our Albert himself – unless one believes in recessive genes ie; his grandmother’s. But I think that in general Allingham suggests that Campion shares few of his parent’s characteristics – comments Roger? .  

Jennifer added…..   

Of course, there’s the illuminating moment in ‘Fashion in Shrouds’ when Albert and Val stand next to each other and regard themselves in the mirror… Presumably Albert and Val have one ‘strain’ of genes (the grandmother’s, one assumes) and dissolute ninny of the elder brother the other ‘strain’! And ‘Police at the Funeral’ is interesting too in this light – as, I suppose, are the wonderful Palinodes in ‘More work…’ not to mention the Fittons (‘Sweet Danger’). A whole dissertation here, perhaps!   

In terms of what is happening with Allingham’s writing I want to go back a little, especially as I have been away since Coroners. Coroners Pidgin and More Work for the Undertaker are both it seems to me transitory books. This is not to undermine or denigrate them; they are both fascinating and strong. But they seem to me to both look back and forward in terms of sequence (this is of course a judgement made in hindsight). Both are centred on Albert in the style of the pre-war books. Undertaker in particular questions what his role in the post-war world is to be. In a sense this looks back. On the other hand they are both London books. I know that previous books have been set in London and we have seen foreshadowings of this development. But it is in these books that London becomes
dominant. A character in its own right ; vast, mysterious, sinister and yet at times joyful. This looks forward to Tiger and Hide; it is not yet fully realised.

There is then that vast leap, that step into a world of darkness represented by Tiger. What an incredible book. A study of evil. Here was a new direction found in a startling way. And it is a new direction in which Albert is to extent marginal. He does not fit in. So his part is reduced. This shows the extent of Allingham’s greatness. She was prepared to make this move because the fiction she wanted to write demanded it.

But did she miss Albert? Did readers complain? Was she drained by the writing? (Roger or others may well be able to supply answers).Whatever the reason
Beckoning Lady represents a retreat. A retreat from London. A retreat to the very early books. A retreat to Albert. But it doesn’t work. All the comments I
read here seemed agreed on that. I am actually less negative than some (I have no problems with Luke and Pru – you cynical lot ) but I still think it is a failure. There is no going back – the world has moved on and Allingham is, by now, such a realist, so concerned with the world about her, that the book feels false. It certainly has its joys and delights like any novel of return to happy childhood. But these are not challenging.

So what does she do? Returns very directly to the territory of Tiger. London and evil and innocence. And as a result Campion retreats again. His part in Hide is minimal.There is a marvellous passage in Chapter 15 where Campion is introduced to Inspector Donne…”Campion was faintly dismayed to notice that he was being apprised in the light of a legend and an example encountered in the flesh for the first time”. He has become legend and myth – perhaps to some extent for Allingham too.

And yet. We are connected back to the early books, to green and pleasant Suffolk by the figure of Annabelle. Annabelle’s function is not just to give us a heroine
in peril – her peril is quite limited. We must note that for her London is marvellous, joyous, exciting. It gives her freedom and independence. There is no hackneyed and clichéd bad city/good country duality in Allingham. The city may harbour great evil ; it also offers freedom and excitement and pleasure. All this you will have noticed takes the form of introductory ramblings – I have not even got near the main themes of the book and its astonishing central figure – the tragic Polly. This is long enough for now so I will save that for later.

In my first post I tried to place Hide My Eyes in the context of the Campion series. Here I want to dwell on the book in its own terms.

The central wonder and greatness of the book for me revolves around the figure of Polly. Campion, we have noted, hardly appears. Annabelle is a delight but an insubstantial figure. Richard is a rather mundane hero. Gerry is a riveting villain but one feels one has met him before. With Polly however Allingham has created an original. And she works on two levels. As a character in her own right. Allingham has always been at her best with older women. Roger could no doubt provide us with a wonderful list – but books which spring to my mind are Police at The Funeral, Death of A Ghost, Black Plumes. Polly of course is not one of these matriarchs. But she is engaging, charming, delightful.Yet, at a second level, Polly is used by Allingham for a further examination of innocence and its perversion. There is something of the moral fable here. No simple fable either but a complicated one. Allingham never ducks this issue. Polly’s innocence is wilful. And that wilfulness has cost lives. It has led to evil. Turning a blind eye is here a crime. And yet it is a crime which is humanised; humanised in the form of a lovable, generous old lady. People often talk about Golden Age mystery writing as bland, as a matter of technical whodunnits with no real sense of crime, or evil, or the messiness of life. I don’t know if those people have ever read a book like Hide My Eyes, or if they have whether they have thought about it, responded to it properly.

The ending of Hide My Eyes, while conventionally happy for Annabelle and Richard is in many ways as bleak as it gets. There is no remission for Polly. Her life will be a misery.

Gerry. I said that he was less interesting than Polly but it is still a remarkable portrait of a sociopath. In Chapter 10 Gerry outlines his own philosophy…

I never let anything tear the skin. I’ve never been faintly fond of anything or of anybody in my life.’ He spoke lightly but with satisfaction. ‘I’m deadly serious about this. I spotted the plain mechanical truth of it as a child. You could almost call it the Chad-Horder discovery. Any kind of affection is a solvent. It melts and adulterates the subject and by indulging it he loses his identity and hence his efficiency.

It is worth noting that Richard fails completely to discern the menace in this; he still has Gerry down as some kind of small-time crook or fraudster until very near the book’s end. It is also worth noting that to some extent Gerry is lying; he is ‘faintly fond’ of Polly as again the book’s climax will reveal. But beyond this it is worth noting that this kind of ‘philosophy’ (one should not really dignify it with this title) is one which remains very evident in society – ‘its a dog eat dog world’, ‘every man for himself’, the clichés are endless; and this kind of emotional and moral selfishness and isolation are often the recipients of praise – care for and connection to others is seen as ‘soft’ – a weakness. I think it is quite justifiable to draw these wider parallels because I think Hide My Eyes is a serious book and Allingham is making serious points. The logical conclusion of such lines of thought are sociopathy and murder. Gerry is a great creation because he is not a bug-eyed monster; he is plausible, believable, even to some extent charming.

Second, the sheer quality of some of the writing. Allingham (unlike her peers) just seems to get better and better.Many passages could be selected…here is one
from quite late in the book when Polly is finally forced to confront Gerry and the truth about him…

She was dead to the gay room, to the fleeing children, to the blessed ordinary programme of sleeping and waking, lost in a single dreadful effort to comprehend

Wonderful!

************************************8

From Elizabeth B….

I hadn’t realised before just how many psychopaths she does feature. I suppose that is not that unexpected in a mystery writer, but I associate it more with more recent writers. It doesn’t seem to me to be a feature of other Golden Age writers so much.

Christine answered….

Psychos and sociopaths seem to be Allingham’s stock in trade. In addition to Tiger in the Smoke and Tether’s End, at least three other books feature clearly psychotic villains: Sweet Danger, Traitor’s Purse and Death of a Ghost. There are others where the wrong doers are sociopaths: Mystery Mile, Look to the Lady, A Fashion in Shrouds, Police at the Funeral, Dancers in Mourning. It seems as though she finds it difficult to contemplate evil-it is easier to see a screw loose. Agatha Christie suggested a great many of her killers were plain evil! Of course Allingham does a much better job creating her eccentric characters.

I think this is a very tricky area because defintions of what makes a psychopath/sociopath  will vary. I think it can certainly be said that the characters in Tiger/Tether (I’ll use the US title for ease) are psychopathic and represent a new and startling departure among the GA Queens – one reason for the book’s extraordinary power and also why some GA fans don’t like them. Havoc for instance is a figure who has hardly dated at all.

I am not sure that I would say any of the other characters are psychopaths. At the risk of generalising my own study of motive in Allingham and Christie is that in the latter money is the most prevalent motive – if you follow the money you will be right more often than not (although following the money is always very complex indeed!!) – although in her very late books this became less true. For Allingham on the other hand the motive, or problem, is more likely to be one of ego. I suppose you can define this as psychopathic or sociopathic or, indeed, evil. It is a fascinating point which would be very interesting to consider in relation to each individual book.

I have re-titled this fascinating discussion as we have moved into much wider waters.

Wider and murkier! Very obviously these issues and questions are not only incapable of any solution or definite answer, they are also crucial to the way in which people view the world – we are really talking about free will and the extent to which it exists, and one’s attitude to this will be determined by one’s philosophical and theological viewpoints (so it is highly commendable that the discussion is being conducted in such a wonderfully civilised manner ).

What we can say is that in Allingham’s mature work these questions do very much come to the fore, in a way which they don’t tend to in her contemporaries. One needs to be careful here of course. In one sense most murderers are ‘evil’ in the sense that they commit evil acts. That doesn’t take us very far and is fairly dull. The interest and debate start to come in when we get to motive, and to characters who commit ‘evil’ acts not out of any self-interest (for money, to protect themselves etc.), but either because they actually get pleasure from the act, or because they don’t see the act as evil (interestingly one of Christie’s most ‘evil’ characters in this sense is not a murderer at all but a victim – Mrs Boynton in Appointment With Death). Now quite a lot of Allingham’s characters fall into the latter categories – far more I would judge than her contemporaries (though now the idea is much more common).

Using Beth’s definition…

From what I have been able to find out a psychopath is a person with an antisocial personality disorder, manifested in aggressive, perverted, criminal, or amoral behavior without empathy or remorse. (definition)

But this of course begs all sorts of questions – most crucially for us that of free will. To quote Roger…

Nick, if I read him correctly, is more of my own opinion, that Marge was much bolder in contemplating evil than most of her contemporaries. One of the policemen in “The Tiger in the Smoke” says that he does not believe that Jack Havoc is in any way mad. Assistant Commissioner Oates grudgingly admires Havoc’s stamina and determination in feigning a form of obsession, but is quite clear that Havoc is that rare thing, a truly wicked man.Canon Avril recognises that Havoc has chosen to be bad, quoting Satan’s line from “Paradise Lost”: “Evil, be thou my good.” Neither Jack Havoc nor Gerry Hawker (in “Hide My Eyes”) kills or steals compulsively or impulsively. Even a supreme egotist has a choice. Even a psychopath has a choice.

You certainly were reading me correctly Roger .

But I was merely trying to present what I thought were Allingham’s views. My own are much less clear-cut and constantly in revision in any case! (and not of interest here anyway).

Well we will be reading Tiger in May and it will be fascinating to do so with this discussion in mind. As mr molesack commented…”TIGER is at least partly about how and why people turn to evil, and the destructive effects that it can have on them.”

1.) As the second ‘war’ book – directly following, of course, Traitor’s Purse but written at a different stage of the war when, crucially, the outcome was clear. There is very little of the stirring patriotism of the former book. Rather there is weariness and uncertainty – weariness in Albert himself for instance.

2.) In connection to pre-war books such as Ghost, Dancers, Fashion. Again we have a weird extended ‘family’ dominated as in Dancers by the personality of one extraordinary person. What, Allingham seems to ask, has happened to an example of one of her families, both during and as a result of the War?

3.) As the first of an extraordinary trilogy of London books. We have had books which have made memorable use of London settings before and will have later, but in the trio of Coroners Pidgin, More Work for the Undertaker and Tiger in the Smoke it is arguable that Allingham’s writing about and fascination with London reaches its peak. This is really another unique feature of Allingham’s writing. Classic Golden Age British writing is often (lazily) presented as stereotypically rural – St Mary Mead – but here the setting is as urban as it could be.

The following is a very egocentric account of the discussion, which can be followed in full by going to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/albertcampion/messages and typing 1131 in the Message# box.

I admit that I find Fashion a difficult book to assess and discuss. It is one of those books (like Gaudy Night) which divides mystery fans. There are those who really dislike the direction in which it takes the mystery – and such critics would include figures of considerable repute like Robert Barnard and possibly Julian Symons. Of course such comments do not merely apply to Fashion which is merely the culmination of the trend we have seen developing from Ghost, through Flowers and Dancers. But my question is – is it a culmination too far?

Because like Roger I have some problems with Fashion. For all its many qualities I am left with a lurking unease.

To start by stating the obvious. Allingham’s concern in this book is to portray a particular part of the social world she saw about her (The Fashion) and also to convey her thoughts about the position of women and the relationships between men and women in contemporary society. Stated in this bald way the enormity of the task and the boldness of conception becomes immediately apparent. Vast chunks of the book are devoted to reflections on this issue.

Now a major problem about this is that the issue is not really very closely related to the mystery. Compare this with Gaudy Night. There the problems of the relation of men and women and the position of women in society and academia are closely intertwined with the mystery and the perpetrator. In Fashion the murderer is just another self-centred egoist – he is very similar in some ways to the murderers in Ghost, Flowers and Dancers (this has only just struck me but it appears true – anyone have any thoughts?).The book therefore lacks the kind of intertwining of plot and theme which Gaudy Night achieves.

On the other side of the equation we have Campion. Campion has achieved a totality of personality, an identity, enigmatic, problematic aspects over the past few books, especially Dancers, which are continued in Fashion and are light-years in advance of anything Sayers managed with Wimsey.

We should note how, in a brilliant imaginative coup, Allingham ties Fashion to Dancers with the delightful episode of the yellow button (AC tosses Linda’s yellow button out of his window where it falls into Amanda’s face – the button or baton is passed on – sorry!!). I like Roger’s account of Allingham’s response to Frank Swinnerton. Fashion is very much an immediate sequel to Dancers.

But for all this it is the women – Amanda, Gloria, Val – who dominate Fashion. Men are mainly seen in relation to their relationships with women. And time and again Allingham returns to the question of those relationships. In this process Campion himself plays some part but his voice and view are not decisive. How could they  be? Precisely because his own character and his own relationships with women have been so complicated and messy we know that his opinions are compromised. It is Allingham herself who one feels wrestling with the problem.

And my ultimate problem is I suppose, not that this gives in the words of Barry Pike which Roger cited ‘an obsessively feminine quality’ (thus summarising in three words what I have taken hundreds to try to grope towards!), but that the answers which Allingham provides are not ones with which I have great sympathy. The interest is I am not sure Allingham herself does either.

But further consideration of these matters demands a separate post [Below].

Here I am more concerned to establish my concern that Fashion in a way goes too far. That is to say the concern with social and psychological issues almost drowns out the mystery altogether.I find it hard to make this allegation because as a whole I view the developments which Sayers in the Vane novels and Allingham in this quartet (Ghost, Flowers, Dancers and Fashion) made to the British mystery as not only revolutionary, but as laying the grounds for the great development of the British mystery in later years, and in themselves brilliant. But it seems to me that the logical conclusion of the direction in which Allingham is going is towards the total elimination of the mystery element, and hence out of the genre. Perhaps as she never proceeded further in this direction it may be argued that she too felt this?

Whatever the truth of this I am sure that it is this which makes Fashion such a controversial novel. The famous Torquemada comment is in itself a commentary on this from the other side (“To Albert Campion has fallen the honour of being the first detective to figure in a story which is also by any standard a distinguished novel,” said Torquemada of the Observer in a review of Fashion)

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As remarked in my previous post I wanted to write separately about the question of Allingham’s treatment of and portrayal of women in Fashion. As this is the book’s central theme and is constantly discussed this is no small task.And although my overall reaction may be negative, once again I enter the caveat that I applaud Allingham for attempting this and, whatever else may be said, she deserves to be taken seriously.

As the task is very complicated I am glad to say that help is at hand in the shape of an excellent essay in the Centenary Celebration by Marianne van Hoeven
entitled “Classifying Amanda: Female and Femininity in the Pre-War Writing of Margery Allingham“. While I lean heavily on this in the following the actual points made and expressions are all mine (unless attributed.).

Hoeven starts by defining the difference between female (biological gender) and feminine (social construct). It is with contemporary defintions of the latter that Allingham is concerned.We are presented with three main women in Fashion – Gloria, Val and Amanda. There is never any question of where Allingham’s
sympathies lie. Gloria is a very negative character, Amanda very positive. The reader is of course meant to dislike Georgia and admire Amanda (and it would seem from discussion here that this aim is very successfully achieved! ). We are presented with two particular aspects of these women’s lives – their professional/working lives, and their relationships to men. In each case the attitudes and positions of the women are compared and contrasted. Gloria is, for me, much the least interesting of these women. She is of course a ‘femme fatale’. Allingham is fiercely critical of her. She is a selfish and a destructive force. She takes Alan away from Val romantically and away from Amanda professionally. She seems to me to be something of a cardboard character. Allingham’s lack of sympathy with such a woman is very apparent. Having said which what I like is that Allingham does not kill her off – instead as we leave her …. “She looked beautiful, sweetly feminine and virginal, as she went off on a new adventure, tears still on her cheeks” (p261 Penguin edition). The reader is well aware that the use of the term ‘virginal’ is somewhat ironic! But beyond this we have the use of ‘feminine’ – this has become a term of disparagement and criticism. I like however the fact that Allingham allows her enemy to escape unscathed.

It is really in Val and Amanda that Allingham develops her thoughts. And especially Val. The crucial and much debated passage appears to me to be that in Chapter 12 where Val and Albert talk and Albert says…”What you need, my girl, is a good cry or a nice rape”.It is not surprising that this remark has drawn widespread condemnation and disapproval even from some Allingham fans. And taken at face value it is wholly objectionable. I want to make some points about this.

First, to re-iterate something I know I keep going on about, Allingham does not intend us to take Albert as a reliable guide to women. Indeed he is highly unreliable. Anyone who has read Dancers will be aware of the depth of that unreliability.In Fashion his own weaknesses and lack of perception is repeatedly stressed. There is absolutely no suggestion whatever that Albert speaks for Allingham here. It is precisely his existence as a flawed character, separate from his author, which makes him the greatest of the Golden Age detectives. Any contrast with Poirot, Alleyn, even Wimsey makes this immediately apparent. It is an insensitive, boorish, stupid remark. And Albert can be all of those things. As most men can! When Val calls him in the speech preceding this remark ‘my dear good ape’ she is totally accurate. It is she who speaks for the author.So I suggest that to accuse Allingham herself of taking the position that Val needs a good rape is to misunderstand the way her fiction works.

Second I think (and this is a wholly personal perception) that rape here means sex. I am searching for a euphemism and the odd thing is that I suspect Allingham was too. Now it seems to us absurd that rape should be a euphemism for sex but might this not have been the case in 1938? This does not make Albert’s observation any less crass but it does absolve it of some of the modern implications of the word. In this context Hoeven notes (not in connection with this) that Havelock Ellis, the sexologist, had argued in the 1920′s that ‘women’s sexuality needed to be recognised and fulfilled through heterosexual relationships’ – spinsters in Hoeven’s words were made to appear ‘social deviants’. Albert is therefore expressing a contemporary position which we have no reason to suggest Allingham herself accepted (this information about Ellis of which I was unaware throws an interesting light on other GA authors treatment of spinsters – notably Marsh).

None of the above detracts from the fact that it is an uncomfortable moment.

However what it should not detract from is the importance of Val’s speeches which surround it. Here she is on women…”Our feeling is twice as strong as our heads and we haven’t been trained for thousands of years. We’re feminine you fool!”. Hoeven also cites this speech and the essence of her argument is the importance of the word ‘feminine’ as opposed to ‘female’. Femininity is a social construct – which ‘training’ could alter. It is because Val is a ‘feminine’ woman that she accepts what Hoeven rightly describes as Alan Dell’s ‘appalling proposal’ – that she should give up her career and independence to become his doormat. It is profoundly distasteful.

But we are of course presented with a very different model of woman in Amanda. Hoeven cites the phrase (which I have not found yet) ‘traces of femininity in Amanda were rare’.Hoeven traces this back to Sweet Danger where Amanda is placed in opposition to her ‘feminine’ sister Mary. Hoeven sums up “In The Fashion in Shrouds, Margery Allingham appears to present Amanda as the ideal balanced young woman of her generation – female certainly but not feminine”. Of course there is a danger of over-schematizing this contrast.Allingham is too fine and complicated a writer to make things simple. In particular Amanda’s own distinction between ‘cake’ love and ‘bread and butter’ is reductionist and ultimately absurd – Hoeven comments that it is a product of ‘youth and emotional
inexperience’. Love after all , however one defines or considers the word/concept, comes in all shapes and sizes. But leaving such philosophical considerations aside we may remark that in Fashion it would appear that for Amanda what she calls ‘cake love’ is destructive of both one’s professional life/career and for women their independence. This is illustrated by Val’s progress.

I have deliberately omitted here any personal applications or contexts (ie: Allingham’s own situation and thoughts). This is for a couple of reasons…
1.) Ignorance – I don’t know enough about her life.
2.) Distrust of biographical explanations. While I see their utility there is always a danger of belittling the writer’s achievement by reducing it to a question of their personal circumstances – it seems to me that this is particularly the case with women writers.

Having said which I am sure it is an avenue which could be explored. Hoeven suggests that Allingham was ambivalent about her own position as career-woman and quotes Richard Martin…”The awareness of her own femininity, and the attempt to live up to an ideal of womanhood that had little to do with the demands being made upon her, led to much frustration in Marge’s life”.Whatever the truth of this, the treatment of the problems of femininity in Fashion is of great interest and complexity. My own view that it drowns out the mystery (or at least fails to interact with the mystery) should not detract from regarding Allingham’s attempt with respect, even if I view her conclusion that whole-hearted love entails the surrender of a woman’s independence profoundly unpleasant not to mention wrong. I accept that she gets around this in a way with Amanda but Val’s fate is poignant one which the modern readers’ happiness for Albert and Amanda cannot wholly obliterate. Their own ‘happy ending’ throws Val’s fate into starker relief.

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Judy G. wrote…
 

I find the relationship between Albert and Val very puzzling. ……………Does Albert actually tell his sister what is going on as regards Amanda at any point, or does he just leave her to worry about him?!

Thanks for a most interesting and illuminating post Judy. I must admit I hadn’t considered this aspect at all. As far as the specific point is concerned I don’t think he had told Val what was really going on. In Chapter 22 Ferdie says to AC “I was talking on the phone just now. She said Val seemed very worried about you.” – of
course Val could have been acting but it is my belief that Albert would not have trusted her to do this – her genuine worry is more part of his scene-setting? If this is so it does indicate a willingness to ‘use’ her which is, as you suggest, a little unsettling.

I remember when I first read this novel as a teenager, finding all the love plot near the end so intensely written that I couldn’t quite believe Campion’s despair was all fake. Reading it again now, I still think Allingham writes with a lot of power in this section – that line “He looked like a skeleton in a dinner jacket” is one which sticks in my mind. I suppose maybe Campion is doing a bit of method acting here, getting himself into a genuine state so that he can convince everyone his heart is really broken – and of course there is all the strain and worry of the case to draw on, plus the lingering aftermath of the Linda Sutane business.

Yes, excellent point. I recall now that I was completely fooled when I first read the book. This is one of the things one misses or forgets on re-reads – they do enable one to get a lot more insight but you do miss the brilliance of some of the narrative tricks. Do others remember if they were ‘fooled’ the first time they read the book?

I think there is something brilliant about the way Allingham allows readers to see through Campion’s eyes for most of the book, then suddenly draws away and shows him from outside, through the eyes of others, in this last section. Must disagree with those who don’t like this book… it is probably one of my favourites, mainly because of the return of Amanda, who I must agree with Roger is a wonderfully drawn character. I love the way she is so perceptive about the other characters and always sees things as they are.

I am delighted that you champion the book Judy! And my own slightly negative comments are at the very highest standard – that is I am comparing it with Dancers and Gaudy Night and considering Allingham’s overall development – not as might be fairer with the generality of British mysteries.

Thank you for giving your take on this, Nick – very helpful! I feel you are right that Val does not know about the play-acting.I couldn’t make up my mind if she did know or not – because, if she thinks it is all real, it seems rather odd that she keeps her distance from Albert and is mainly concerned to smooth his behaviour over with others rather than giving him any support. (He might not want her support, of course, but still.) This is rather like his behaviour to her earlier, when he just doesn’t want to know about her misery over Alan Dell. Somewhere (can’t find the page now) he says: “Our family has never been hysterical” – sounds a bit like something his mother might write in a letter! I also see, looking back, that Val clearly knows nothing about Campion and Linda. (She suggests to him that he should try falling in love some time). This brother and sister might feel each other’s pain, but they don’t seem to tell each other very much. Did Allingham write any novels which are just psychological without the murder mystery element? The layers of complicated psychology in FIS make me think she would do it very well.

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Roger wrote….

 Margery Allingham’s own views on the equality of the sexes and the relative status of the partners in a marriage were ambivalent, and her marriage to Philip Youngman Carter was volatile, to say the least. It is very tempting to suppose that Val’s doubts about Alan Dell (‘I tell you I’d rather die than have to face it that he was neither better nor even more intelligent than I am!’) represent Margery’s thoughts about her own marriage: that she knew PYC to be neither better nor more intelligent than she was, and she resented the fact.

As noted I have avoided the biographical approach as a result of ignorance but I like this speculation. I recur to a point I made that Val seems the most interesting woman in the book because of her ambiguities and complexities, where Amanda seems more of an ideal (and Georgia a non-ideal – ummm what’s the word I want? nightmare?).

Moreover, Campion realises that as a stepfather Ramillies has brought a much-desired stability to young Sinclair’s life, which his less obviously volatile mother cannot provide.

I have not commented on Sinclair but this seems to me another of the book’s great successes – the sheer misery of being the ‘odd one out’ at an English boarding school is most beautifully conveyed.

 The idea of a super-luxury hotel with all the amenities is a strikingly modern one, as is the notion (essential to the plot) of having the private airfield registered as a Customs Port.

I must admit the description of Caesars Court reminded me of one of those schemes which penniless young men in Wodehouse are always trying to raise the money to invest in (usually from miserly Aunts/Uncles) so they can make a living and marry the various heroines. Of course it is in fact on a very much grander scale than this. And it is indeed strikingly modern. There is now at least one chain of hotels/resorts devoted to this kind of thing (I once stayed in one ).

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Joanna wrote…..

I’ve always identified with Amanda’s comment on cake versus bread and butter love. I think it’s a good description of wildly exciting ‘in love’ and solid everyday loving marriage. I suppose it depends how you feel about cake

Of course there is a danger of making this contrast too schematic. Allingham is too fine and complicated a writer to make things simple. In particular Amanda’s own distinction between ‘cake’ love and ‘bread and butter’ is reductionist and ultimately absurd – Hoeven comments that it is a product of ‘youth and emotional
inexperience’. Love after all , however one defines or considers the word/concept, comes in all shapes and sizes. But leaving such philosophical considerations aside we may remark that in Fashion it would appear that for Amanda what she calls ‘cake love’ is destructive of both one’s professional life/career and for women their independence. This is illustrated by Val’s progress. [ and it is worth pointing out that in Traitors Purse Amanda has to change her position - eat her cake in fact!].

I should start by saying that I think this is a very great book – certainly in my Top 100 British Mysteries.

Part of greatness lies in its power to shock. And I find it helpful with this book to outline the plot as I see it (or that part of the plot which seems to me the book’s core)…….

Albert falls in love with a married woman. He suspects the woman’s husband of murder, but because he loves the woman he absents himself from the case and, if not actively obstructing, at least does nothing to assist the investigation. What is more Campion is aware of this and analyses his situation with brutal honesty…

“Regarded dispassionately it resolved itself to a simple enough question. If you are violently and unreasonably attracted to a married woman, to discover immediately afterwards that to the best of your belief her husband has killed, either by accident or design, a previous wife…….do you involve yourself further in the situation, denouncing him for his crime and walking off with the lady? ‘No, you don’t’ said Campion aloud, ..”

To put it another way the code of the detective and the code of ‘honour’ as Campion perceives it are in direct conflict.

To show how radical all this is, if it is not self-apparent, we should compare with Allingham’s peers. The question does not arise for Christie since Poirot and Marple are not of this type. But in their own ways both Sayers and Marsh approach the issue – Wimsey falls in love with Harriet while she stands in the dock accused of murder (Strong Poison), and Alleyn is in love with Troy when he is investigating a murder at her house (Artists in Crime). But there the resemblance ends. Neither Harriet not Troy is married, but much more importantly both Wimsey and Alleyn are convinced of their innocence, and it is never suggested that either man would be diverted from the course of their ‘duty’ whatever the cost might be. The internal dialogue (quite apart from its psychological honesty) quoted above is unimaginable in either Wimsey or Alleyn (or in Sayers or Marsh). ( I am not here disparaging other writers – I am a fan of all the Big 4 – I just see that their strengths were very different and it helps me to think about each by comparing them).

We can go further than this with Campion in Dancers however. Even in a mystery novel of today it would be slightly shocking if a detective proceeded as Albert does.In a way the whole ethos/morality of the British mystery novel is based on the notion that the pursuit of the truth is the highest good and nothing should stand in its way. Perhaps this is no longer true but it certainly was in the 1930′s. So Dancers represents a very radical step. And I have to admit that my own instinctive reaction is that Campion is wrong. But I react like that because I am conditioned by the genre.

The fact that Campion is also wrong in fact – it is not Jimmy – makes no difference to the argument above. Indeed it greatly deepens the complexities Allingham
introduces.Not only is Albert’s moral judgement questioned, his intellectual processes are shown to be faulty. In fact in Dancers Albert becomes a real grown-up human being. Perhaps the first to step onto the stage of the British mystery. I can think of no other challengers to this title.

If Judge represented Allingham’s growing-up, then Dancers represents Campion’s growing-up. The debt which later mystery writers owe her is enormous. A quote which sums this up appears at the end of Chapter 17…

“Hitherto he had been an observer only in the many dramas which he had investigated and that circumstance had given him an unfounded sense of superiority. To-night he felt cold and disillusioned; no longer shocked but frankly despairing to find himself both so human and so miserably unhappy.”

I cannot help but read this as the gentlest of allusions not only to Albert’s earlier outings but to Poirot, Wimsey and Alleyn (to name but 3) – is there not in all
of them, however minutely, that ‘sense of superiority’? Whatever, in Dancers Albert Campion becomes a grown-up human with all the suffering that such a transition entails. The leap from Emily’s ‘silly ass persona’ to Albert in Dancers is quite without parallel in British mystery fiction as far as I know.

Roger very correctly and expertly pointed out that “All I’d add is that, though Raymond Chandler tried very hard to convince us all that Dashiell Hammett’s detective stories are completely different from those of his British contemporaries, Samuel Spade faces the same sort of dilemma in ‘The Maltese Falcon’, and his suspicions prove to be correct. He takes the same line as Wimsey and Alleyn – honour before love, I suppose you could call it.”

Roger’s invaluable notes need no commentary but there are two other things in Dancers which I want to comment on.

First the bomb at the station. Roger quotes from the passage about the way that the news the bomb attack spread. I am wondering about the precedents for this? I am unable off the top of my head to think of any similar crimes in the literature of the period, though I suppose they might have been more likely to occur in thrillers than the classical Golden Age mystery.There is something very shocking about this crime, and of course it has a very contemporary resonance in the way very few Golden Age murders do. But apart from literary precedents what about real life incidents? How many bomb attacks were there in the inter-war years?

Because the peculiar and unsettling thing is the way that Allingham treats it. Chapter 18 ,which describes it, is marked by a sudden change in style and narrative approach – the relation of the spread of what is at first rumour is given full weight (and we should note that it is at the end of Chapter 17 that the passage I quoted above where Campion finds himself both ‘human and so miserably unhappy’ immediately precedes this – it is as though Allingham is going on to demonstrate the unhappiness of humanity generally, but also as if this outrage is some sort of answer or instruction to Campion to cease being so self-obsessed – truly Dancers is a complex novel).

The horror of the bomb is given full weight in the descriptions which follow and again Allingham uses a new, for her (as far as I can recall?) stylistic device of telling the story through a newspaper report. This, in the context of the book, seems to me to give added weight to the atrocity. And Allingham continues to reinforce the horror – the porter’s wife who commits suicide in the next chapter. It is really an astonishing piece of writing and I am, as I say, interested in its sources or precursors both literary and actual?

The final passage I wish to quote is in some ways unconnected with Dancers as a specific book but very much relates to all I have been trying to claim about Allingham’s concerns at this time. It comes in Chapter 5 and shows Campion musing…

“As he walked alone between the yew hedges it occurred to him that in an age when all the deepest emotions can be successfully laughed out of existence by any decently educated person, the sanctity and importance of sudden death was a salutary thing, a little last rock, as it were, in the shifty sands of one’s own standards and desires.”

The many ramifications of this remark, not only for Allingham but for all inter-war mysteries (the Golden Age) would be worthy of a book to themselves! On the other hand it does not do to overstate the case, because there were many people for whom this was quite untrue. But clearly the notion of laughing deepest emotions out of existence instantly makes, me at least, think of the Waugh of Vile Bodies, Decline and Fall etc.. Of course in terms of Dancers the impact is rather different because Albert is very quickly going to learn that other deep emotions cannot be laughed out of existence.

But it is above all as a reflection on her own trade as a mystery writer that the passage seems to me of interest. It is almost as if she is saying that her books
need not be trivial entertainments, but can contain serious observation and comment. And surely in Dancers she most magnificently proves the truth of this.