Still not sure if this is bad or a joke. The plot is preposterous (and I'm generally willing to suspend belief for far more ridiculous concepts, but apparently less so for this genre). I couldn't tell you what was going on with Mr Campion. Is he old or young? Camp misogynist or keen on his cousin? Some kind of criminal mastermind that the police turn a blind eye to or an eccentric detective even more bizarre than anything Doyle or Christie came up with? Another question - who was making the bet at the beginning and did they ever pay up? The racial stereotype of evil foreign brown people was a bit derivative, but I can't expect too much from something this old. I think there's another 9 or 10 of these on my bookshelf and I'm not sure if I should bother with any more of them. I'm awarding the star for the landscape. I always love a map in a book, and this was an interesting depiction of a part of England I've never really heard about before. Still, I miss Phillip Marlowe. I knew where I was with him.