Coroner's Pidgin (1945)
My review:
“The situation was so macabre, the possibilities so unpleasant, the characters so illustrious, and the explanations so humanly silly that it left him speechless.”
A good book, in which Campion, recently returned from the war, is disturbed by one of Allingham’s grande dames, ably assisted by Lugg, carrying a corpse up the staircase of his flat. This ties in with stolen bottles of wine (amazingly complex and rather difficult to understand), looted lorries and a war hero (the grande dame’s son) suspected of Fifth Column activities, and in whose pre-marital bed the dead woman was discovered. Allingham’s characterisation is remarkably vivid, and she is a great writer—she makes one want to read on. Entertaining but somehow too complex to bring the book into the top rank.