Enid Blyton crossed with the Prisoner of Zenda and Indiana Jones

Sweet Danger, Margery Allingham’s 1933 thriller featuring her detective and gentleman adventurer Alfred Campion, is rather like Enid Blyton crossed with the Prisoner of Zenda and Indiana Jones.

It’s very much a book of an era that has come and gone, which gives this fantastical story a period charm as an absurd romp with miscreants all round as upper-class Alfred Campion and friends try to track down a set of clues to justify Britain’s claim to a piece of foreign land in front of the International Court.

In one respect Allingham’s novel is less dated than many of its contemporaries, for while it is very much a book in which the men take the lead and the women follow in their wake, in this case, there are several female characters who show their own initiative, and one even who does not see her future as simply being about marrying the right man.

The novel also forms the basis of one of the Campion stories televised in 1989-1990, featuring Peter Davison as Campion.

Campion’s regular sidekick, by the way, is called Magersfontein Lugg, making him surely the possessor of the best sidekick name in a thriller/detective novel series.

Buy Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham here.