I enjoyed Margery Allingham’s Traitor’s Purse published in 1941. The hero is her own Bertie Wooster: Albert Campion.
In many respects he differs from Bertie but they both have loyal manservants: Lugg and Jeeves. When I read her and Plum’s books I suspend disbelief; both have complex and frankly preposterous plots. In Margery Allingham’s case I don’t care so long as the plot rattles along like a goods train on some Class A drug. But I have to make a stand. I simply cannot swallow this excerpt from Traitor’s Purse:
“Ah yes, of course, my mistake. That will be Lady A. Fitton, won’t it?” murmured the Superintendent, glancing down at the slip in his hand.
“No, It’s Lady Amanda. As the sister of a peer she has taken her Christian name.” Aubrey gave the snippet of information casually and the touch of schoolmaster came oddly from him.”
Perhaps the author is undermining Aubrey’s authority, fore-shadowing the denouement of the novel. Perhaps she made a slip-up and her editor was sloppy. In any event it was not her only book published in 1941. The Oaken Heart is a memoir about her life with her husband in Tolleshunt D’Arcy from 1938 until 1941. Like Mrs Miniver (1939) and Virginia Cowles’ Looking for Trouble, these were books written at a dark hour for Britain and, at least in part, intended to show an American readership what life was like in wartime Britain and beyond.
