Sweet Danger

I've been making my way through some of Margery Allingham's novels, mixing a couple of things I've read before with some that are new to me, starting with Sweet Danger.

The book begins when Guffy Randal bumps into Albert Campion in a hotel on the Riviera. Campion, masquerading as minor a royal, takes Guffy into his confidence: the British government have asked him to secure access to a small medieval protectorate which has suddenly acquired strategic importance, hence the current charade. When it becomes apparent that the problem can be solved by producing a legitimate claim to the Earldom of Pontisbright, Campion and company travel to Suffolk to take up the cause of the Fitton family in the hope of solving the riddle that promises to prove their aristocratic connections.

Not so much a mystery as a treasure hunt, the book realise on various slightly odd coincidences and guesses to give the solution to the riddle. The story unfolds largely from Guffy Randal's point of view, allowing Campion to disappear in the middle of the novel after a disastrous confrontation with the criminal mastermind at the heart of their enemies' plot, while providing the reader with an everyman who needs things explained to him.

The book introduces the destitute Fittons, who make their money using the dynamo connected to their mill wheel to recharge batteries for the locals. The fogeyish 14 year-old Hal is every bit the earl in waiting, his sister Mary is so lightly drawn as to be almost invisible, while Aunt Hatt is so odd — partly, I think, because she's supposed to be American — that I kept expecting her to be unmasked as part of the enemy conspiracy, but alas not! But it's Amanda Fitton, cool and competent with a good technical brain, who is the most important both as a contributor to the current plot and because she goes on to play an important part in the later novels, eventually becoming Campion's wife.

Circuits

With no-one else around this afternoon, I spent a slightly dutiful couple of hours working a couple of difficult bouldering problems — safe now that the league is over — and doing circuits on the board. I'd intended to stay until I'd completed the font 6b+ loop, but after managing the first half of it, I decided that it wasn't worth risking a blistered thumb and called it a day.

It occurs to me that I've really got to come up with a better way of padding out my time between attempts when I'm on my own. I think I might try slipping a book into my climbing bag or maybe putting my kindle in a chalk-proof bag and taking that...