The Case of the Late Pig is a crime novel by Margery Allingham, first published 1937, by Hodder & Stoughton. It is the eighth novel featuring the mysterious Albert Campion and his butler/valet/bodyguard Magersfontein Lugg. As Lugg is reading aloud the obituaries one morning, he comes across one for an old school nemesis of Campion. Remarkably, an anonymous letter inviting Campion to the funeral has also appeared in the morning post. R.I. “Pig” Pe.
The Green Man is an English country pub run by a smart, ironical alcoholic philanderer named Maurice Allingham. The pub is haunted by a wicked seventeenth-century scholar and murderer in the Faustian mode named Thomas Underhill. In his dealings with the supernatural dark side, Underhill also raised an evil spirit of the forest apparently made of tree parts, known as The Green Man, who rises again when Allingham tries to sort out the skeletons in his closets.
Police at the FuneralIn this master detective novel Albert Campion displays the charm and skill that made him Margery Allingham's best-loved character. This time Albert steps in to try and solve the murder of Andrew Faraday. Soon he suspects that a ruthless killer is out to remove all the Faradays, one by one.
More Work for the Undertaker by Margery AllinghamMore Work for the Undertaker by Margery Allingham
The story takes place in Apron St., 'a strange decayed sort of neighbourhood', Dickensian London-at once entertaining and disquieting. Due to Allingham's unique gift for making place as vivid as character, the atmosphere is one of frozen in time, unchanged since the Victorian era. London is described as a series of villages in which the Palinodes act as squires. The characters are, as usual, quite wonderful, and the villains are true 'Margery Allingham evil.' Nobody does this quite like her.
The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery AllinghamThe Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham
Allingham, a contemporary of Agatha Christie, wrote highly detailed, stylish mysteries. Like Christie's Hercule Poirot, Allingham's Albert Campion became a dominant character in her many novels. In The Fashion in Shrouds, Campion finds himself caught up in a series of murders that surround the well-known actress Georgia Wells. As the story progresses, suspects abound. Even Campion's sister, Val, begins to look guilty. After all, Georgia's latest conquest had been Val's beau.
