Mount TBR #52

I read this book for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2017. The challenge is to read books that you already own.

Hide My Eyes a.k.a Tether’s End – Margery Allingham

Allingham started the series starring eccentric PI Albert Campion in the early 1930s and kept developing as a writer of genre fiction until her early death of breast cancer at 62 in 1966. By the time she wrote The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) and this one in 1958, she was exploring suspense and character studies a la Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell (Barbara Vine).

Hide My Eyes is an inverted mystery. Allingham examines the personality of the culprit: methodical, logical, cautious, manipulative, emotionless but charming and ever so ruthless to anybody who stands in his way. Campion’s cop buddy Sergeant Luke has a hunch as to the location of the killer’s stomping grounds. Campion plays barely more than a cameo role in this novel. Luke is less exuberant and Campion less silly, both of which are mercies.

Allingham’s ability to set a scene is on display. Masterful are the descriptions of the eccentric museum in west London and the scrapyard in the East End. She’s excellent with the natural world (London rain) and artifacts (leather gloves and a lizard-skin letter case). We can also learn antique similes like “as close as a rock” for “taciturn.”

All in all, well worth reading for mystery fans who like hard-boiled novels, suspense novels, or urban crime novels but without any violence or bad words.