"The Case of the Late Pig"

To put it bluntly, "Pig" Peters was a distinctly unpleasant person - a bully in school who grew up into a nasty, bullying bottom-feeder. Perhaps it wasn't that surprising that he was murdered. What was considerably more surprising, however, was the fact that some six months before the murder, Albert Campion attended Pig Peters' funeral. As a result, he was more than a little shocked to be called in half a year later to view Peters' freshly-murdered body and try to figure out how it was possible for someone apparently to die twice. Campion found it to be a most unpleasant and dangerous case - just what he might have expected from Pig Peters.

All of which is by way of saying that "The Case of the Late Pig," by Margery Allingham, is reviewed this week on our Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to it here. It is one of Allingham's shorter mystery novels, and it is the only one to be narrated in Campion's voice. It is an excellent Golden Age mystery, with a great deal of humor helping to offset the distinctly nasty details of the murders involved. A lot of the nastiness, though, was Pig's own doing. Many of Allingham's books are thrillers, but "The Case of the Late Pig" is really a more classic mystery, with clues - and red herrings - to lure readers. It's excellent entertainment.