The Golden Age of British Detective Fiction
The idyllic English village of Lindsay Carfax isn't run by the parish
council, the rating authority, the sanitary inspector nor the local cops
as you might suppose. The real bosses are the Carders - something to do
with wool, four hundred years back. They wound stuff on cards, I
suppose. But these boys are very fly customers - they're right on the
ball. Boiled down, it comes to this; they're a syndicate who run this
place - which makes a packet - with their own rules. One way and another
they probably own most of it." Thus ruminated Superintendent Charles
Luke to Albert Campion who was contemplating visiting his wayward
artistic niece in Carfax. And when a missing schoolteacher reappeared
after nine days, and Campion's car was "inadvertently" damaged, not to
mention Campion himself, then all the signs were that not all was what
it seemed. Campion himself plays the central role in this
quintessentially British mystery, but there are appearances too from all
of Margery Allingham's regular characters, from Luke to Campion's former
manservant Lugg, to his wife Lady Amanda Fitton and others. The dialogue
is sharp and witty, the observation keen, and the climax is thrilling
and eerily atmospheric.