Review by Booklist Review
The always entertaining Albert Campion returns in another adventure, this one concerning the mysterious Abdication Treasure. Albert's friend and sometime crime-solving partner, policeman Charlie Luke, is approached by Lord Breeze, who has bequeathed his ancestral home, Heronhoe Hall, to his daughter and her new husband, Oliver. Oliver is certain the Abdication Treasure is hidden there. Nobody knows just what the Abdication Treasure contains, but those who believe it exists think it was a gift from the Duke of Windsor, who often visited Heronhoe Hall with his inamorata, Wallis Simpson, before their affair became public and ended his reign as king. Lord Breeze wants Charlie to make sure that Albert doesn't allow anyone to discover the treasure during the filming of a television documentary at Heronhoe Hall. But it soon turns out that there is a much darker side to the treasure legend involving a dead journalist, a barmaid, members of the Mafia, and the murder of a young woman years earlier. A surprising conclusion, witty dialogue, and the always-charming Albert make this an enjoyable and amusingread.--Melton, Emily Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
"There's no such thing as the Abdication Treasure, so there's nothing to find and Campion had better make sure he doesn't find it!" That cryptic warning, conveyed to Albert Campion through a close friend, drives the plot of Ripley's enjoyable third novel featuring Margery Allingham's gentleman sleuth (after 2016's Mr. Campion's Fault). In 1970, the production of a dramatized documentary about the abdication of Edward VIII is a family affair: Albert's son, Rupert, and his daughter-in-law, Perdita, have been cast as Edward and Wallis Simpson, and he himself is serving as the film's technical adviser. The movie is being shot at Heronhoe Hall, the Suffolk manor house where Edward and Mrs. Simpson held weekend trysts in 1936. Legend has it that, after marrying Mrs. Simpson in 1937, Edward sent an expensive present to the then-owner of Heronhoe. A representative of the crown is worried that Albert is using the movie as pretext to look for this item, but in fact someone else is after the treasure. Ripley makes the most of a clever mystery plot that's not centered on a murder. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Margery Allingham's imperishable Albert Campion, now officially the last survivor of detection's golden age, looks back from 1970 to the surprisingly multilayered intrigue surrounding the Duke of Windsor's visit to a Suffolk archaeological dig shortly before he gave up the throne for the woman he loved.Although it was never to rival Sutton Hoo, it seemed for a time that the Heronhoe boat excavation would put Sweethearting Mound on archaeologists' maps, and in 1935, the future King Edward VIII came to Heronhoe with Wallis Simpson to take a look and be photographed. Their visit proved to be the highlight of the excavation, which turned up nothing much else. Even so, rumors of an Abdication Treasure the grateful Duke later sent the village persist. Now Italian TV documentary filmmaker Daniela Petraglia has swept in to re-create the visit; she's attracted Mr. Campion as her producer and financial backer; and, in a perhaps related development, she's cast his son and daughter-in-law, Rupert and Perdita, as the Duke and Mrs. Simpson. Admonished by an amusingly inappropriate emissary from the royal family to stay far away from any search for any possible treasure, Campion finds himself digging for something quite different: the truth about local journalist Samuel Salt's failure to file any stories about the royal visit, a mystery that turns out to be linked to the unsolved murder of au pair Seraphina Vezzali on a London street soon after she was implicated in a series of home robberies in 1955a death that's long weighed on Mr. Campion's conscience. Ripley sets Allingham's hero a more substantial mystery than in Mr. Campion's Guilt (2016), and the evocations of everything from 1930s manners to an American teenager in 1970 are spot-on. Fans, however, are most likely to be drawn by the nonstop blather, which has a marvelous time-capsule freshness. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
