This next entry in the Campion series was somewhat darker than its predecessors. Campion has been overseas on undercover work and returns to London towards the end of the war. Instead of the warm welcome, he finds a Lugg and a lady smuggling a corpse into his bedroom. The corpse was, in life, a hanger on in the circle of Johnny Carados, and all the clues point to him having murdered her, in his bed, a few days before he;s due to be married to someone else. The body count racks up and there are complications in the shape of stolen goods. Campion comes into this almost in the middle and finds it hard to adjust to the conditions in post blitz London as well accept the facts of the case. Oates, having been on it since the beginning. There's a lot going on in here. Campion seems to be less the gad fly man about town, the events of the past few years seem to have sobered him. That's not a bad thing. ( )

Good mystery book, nothing special. From like 1/3 of the way through the plot moves along at a very good pace and it was very "just one more page". But by the end I felt kind of confused. There's a *lot* of elements introduced and most of them tie together but it's not completely neat and I felt there were some things unexplained, and I feel like there's no way it's a "fair play" mystery (although that might just be me not being very smart). Ending spoilers re what I didn't understand What was the whole roses/pearls thing about? It's really strange, the explanation given is Chivers sent roses and pearls to Moppet for years because... she wanted to feel powerful? Or something. And then Moppet sent notes back like "I don't want this but thanks" every single year? And then Johnny remembered that he'd sent something like that to her 7 years ago and got really mad seeing it again, but refused to say why? It was just... really bizarre and although I get red herrings it didn't feel it was handled well.

Instead of giving like a full summing up near the end it's mostly implied. Campion mentions the policeman is going to be explaining why Chivers tried to kill Bush and I was thinking... well why did she? Their relationship appears suddenly in the last 5% of the book as the thing that ties everything together but it makes very little sense. If she hated him, why was she willing to do all his dirty work for years and years and then only suddenly try and kill him at the end? Like I say I'm probably missing a bunch it was just... weird. Because I'm not smart I'd have appreciated more explicit detail

Otherwise pretty solid - nothing special to recommend it, although the setting of near the end of the war was pretty interesting and I liked the period details a lot. ( )

Pearls Before Swine by Margery Allingham is the 12th book in the Albert Campion series and was first published in 1945.. Albert Campion has been on the continent involved in undercover war work and now has returned to England for some well deserved leave. He is therefore flabbergasted when he steps from his bath only to find the corpse of a woman on his bed. Apparently Lugg and the dowager Marchioness of Carados, not knowing that he was home, thought this was a good place to stash the body that she found in her about-ti-be-married son’s bed.

Thus kicks off this 12th mystery and we find Campion, who only wants to enjoy his leave, caught up in a twisty, complex mystery that will see him chloroformed, kidnapped, involved in a hunt for art thieves and encounter more near murders before he assists the police in finding the true culprit behind all these nasty deeds. Although there were too many characters to keep track of, Pearls Before Swine gives the reader an interesting look at war-time London.

As this series advances we find Campion changing. Originally when introduced he was a 20 something bright young thing, now he is a war-weary 40 year old who yearns for the company of his loved ones amid peace and quiet. Still sharp and well able to out-think most people, especially the criminals, he has the ability to see beneath people’s outer veneer. Although he doesn’t relish the hunt he does truly seem to want to help people. Pearls Before Swine was a little too complex to make for an easy read but it definitely adds to the overall series. ( )

A complex plot, (a bit too complex and odd for me) but nonetheless well paced and a strong enough story to keep a reader engaged. The nineteen forties is a distant world now; nobody lives, thinks or talks that way now.

This seems to be the Year of Allingham for me. Once I got started, after two or three failed attempts, I found that I quite like her spiky sense of humor and her (mostly) lack of romance.

Here we find Campion on his first home leave since WW 2 called him to service. As he’s taking a relaxing bath he hears voices and footsteps in his empty apartment. He soon discovers that Lugg and a couple of women have put a dead woman’s body in his bed.
Naturally he is disconcerted.
The plot has almost too many threads, but they all untangle at the end. It’s a very clever, well-told tale.
Highly recommended. ( )