The Case of the Late Pig

For me this one and "Police at the Funeral" are the best Allinghams. Which one is best is a moot point. I believe the "Pig" has still more originality, pace and fine irony.It's a delightfully "lean" book, everything she put in it is important for the story (and for the fun). She manages to create a story and an ambience that are both surreal (the odd aproach) and plausible at the same time. This was also the Allingham where I found Lugg to be genuinely amusing.

This book is quite different from the others in the Campion series. For one thing it is written in the first person (as if AC is writing his account for a book or a narrative). Secondly, it's a mystery more than a thriller. Most of the books in this series are thrillers, but this one has a genuine mystery to it. As with other Campion stories, the plot has many twists and turns, but with this one the plot really hurries along. Campion attends a funeral of an old school chum at the beginning of the book, but then five months later he hears that this same person has just been recently murdered. He has to go down to East Anglia to investigate this one! How could old "Pig" Peters be dead twice? While he and Lugg are trying to unravel the mystery, they find they are both in grave danger. Although the book is a short one, it still has Margery Allingham's wonderful style and prose. These are really "thinking man's mysteries".

The Case of the Late Pig was originally part of the Mr. Campion Criminologist collection. The novelette took on a life of it's own, however. Quite short, it is ideal for audiotapes, large print novels, and even the telly. What is most unusual about the Late Pig is that it is told by Campion in the first person. If anything, Mr. Campion's version of the crime outdoes Margery Allingham, herself. The shift is viewpoint is refreshing, and it is a shame Allingham did not try this more often.Invited via an anonymous letter Campion attends the funeral of Pig Peters, his school bully, only to find himself invited six months later to assist in a murder case - and the victim is the very same Pig Peters.The dead Mr. Peters has shown up under another identity in a Suffolk Village. His efforts to turn a charming country house into the 30's version of a strip mall earns him the enmity of the owner, Poppy, and all the residents of the local village. So it is no surprise when someone siezes the opportunity and drops a 300 pound flowerpot on him. Campion is called in to assist the chief constable in saving the day (and to defend the innocent).What follows is a classic Allingham comedy of manners, full of delightful characters and unpredictable events. We have two estranged lady friends (Campion's and Pig's), the overly amorous vicar, the bored physician, the mild mannered whippet, and the mysterious mole. And there is the inevitable climax, in which Campion hares over the fields of Suffolk in an effort to save the indomitable Lugg.All of this action helps to distract us from the somewhat thinly disguised murderer. The relative shortness of the book prevents Allingham from throwing up enough confusing red herrings, so you should be able to make a good guess in the first forty or so pages. Don't let this stop you from reading the book, though. It certainly doesn't detract from the overall fun of the novel.

Albert Campion, Margery Allingham's gentleman detective, presents 'The Case of the Late Pig' in the first person, recounting his progress in the whimsical voice so accurately captured by Peter Davision in the BBC adapations of a decade ago. Campion is invited to a most peculiar funeral, at which an old school-fellow, Roland Isidore 'Pig' Peters is the guest of honour, joined by a cast of extraordinary characters, whom Campion observes and, in his turn, dismisses. Several months pass uneventfully, then Campion is called upon by an old friend, Sir Leo Pursuivant, to investigate a death at the local country club. To his surprise, Campion finds not only that the corpse is none other than 'Pig' Peters, whom he had believed dead, but that the cast of the funeral from months before have returned to the stage, all with parts to play. As the death toll begins to climb, Campion must sort truth from fiction, not to mention determine the identity of a mysterious mole...Some readers consider 'the Late Pig' to be one of Margery Allingham's least successful Campion novels. I cannot agree with this opinion. To my mind, this is one of the most amusing and clever of the Campion books, and well worth the time of anyone who has enjoyed any of the other pre-war stories.