Cargo of Eagles

Rating:
Summary: One of her best
Review: Margery Alllingham died while writing this book. It was finished by her husband, Philiip Youngman Carter, an artist and her lifelong collaborator -- and it's none the worse for that. It's got atmosphere by the bucket: the ragged edges of London that merge into noman's lands of forgotten buiding developments and old rubbish heaps, ending in a scruffy little seaside village haunted by kids on motorbikes. Lugg likes it so much he's planning to have a bungalow built there, and an American historian is fossicking around out of love for a young doctor who has inherited a house there. And why is a once-promising poet living there in obscurity? Campion co-opts the historian to help in a mysterious mission and the plot thickens. Sadly the two Campion novels Youngman Carter wrote after Allingham's death are not up to scratch, though the one that isn't Falcon (sorry I've forgotten the title) has just a touch of her elegiac poetry. Elegiac poetry in a mystery writer? Read her and find out.