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(More customer reviews)I read another book by a later Allingham biographer, but in some way I prefer this one, with its very serious literary criticism of her many novels. The book is told in alternating chapters, part of her life, then a discussion of the books she wrote during that period, then back to the life, then to another set of books, etc. It's sort of odd, especially at the end, where "Marge," as Richard Martin calls her, dies on page 223, then we still have to sit through his omnibus discussion of HIDE MY EYES, THE MIND HUNTERS and THE CHINA GOVERNESS.
Martin regards Allingham as a sort of Nabokov of the mystery genre, a writer who was constantly experimenting with "the new and the strange." I think he overstates the case a little bit, but his enthusiasm carries him along like a skiff on the waves. And yes, it's plain to see that with THE TIGER IN THE SMOKE and TETHER'S END Allingham was attempting to turn the classic detective novel, which she had helped pioneer, into a postwar noir mood with emphasis on character instead of plot. And then again a final turn to the fantastic represented best by THE MIND READERS. But this in itself does not make her experimental any more than similar changes in JB Priestley's oeuvre make either author anything but good family fun.
Julia Thorogood, Allingham's other biographer, isn't as graceful a writer and Martin, nor does she go in for close reading or linguistic analysis, but she does paint a very different portrait of Allingham's life, and one wonders which is truer. In Thorogood's biography, Allingham is a desperate fat woman who ruins her health by writing too hard in order to keep a husband who drinks, cheats, and wastes everyone's time, the obnoxious "Pip" (P. Youngman Carter), who later claimed he was responsible for most of her books and who carried on the Campion name after Marge's death, only to run it into the ground. Richard Martin balks even at discussing the controversial CARGO OF EAGLES, which Marge planned but Pip completed. To Martin, Pip was just a nothing not even worthy of extended analysis. To Thorogood, Pip is the reason for inscribing Allingham's tortured life, her reason for living, dying and writing. Who's right? Both of them I guess.
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