A review by haf59
The Estate of the Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham

3.0

Another of Allingham's classic Albert Campion titles. I'm really torn about this series. The mysteries are complex and interesting, and the characters are ok, but there are issues. It's more than ordinarily a series of its time (this one is circa 1955, but honestly, I'd have put it quite a bit older, with some of its nonsense). There are objectionable attitudes towards various population demographics in most of her books, which, meh. Not enough to disqualify a book for me, because books are actually artifacts of when they were written, at least in part of their reality. But Allingham seems to me to write very much in the voice of her time. There are complicated in-jokes and slang, and speech patterns ... I mean, these aren't uncommon, either. I've read and gotten familiar with quite a bit of weird English - I very often understand Shakespeare's peculiarities, and I can shoulder my way through Austen without twitching. But for some reason, Allingham's voice is not so easily assimilated for me. It sets me at a distance. And I've read lots of her contemporaries - so I'm not sure what it is. I just don't feel the voice. That, and the objectionable bits ... Well, Campion is never going to be top tier for me. But the mysteries are nice and complicated, and I do quite often like bits of the side characters.