Short stories really weren't Margery Allingham's forte. The seven included here are light and pleasant and very simplistic, often (as is common in Allingham's work) with solutions the reader could never determine for themselves. Most of them hinge on a trick or an idea or an image - the "cutest" of these being the little onyx talisman in "The Magic Hat" - and they pretty much always start off more interesting than they end. Campion himself is cast in his distinctly pre-war persona; one might even call him blithe.

They're magazine stories. Nothing more, nothing less. ( )