Dancers in Mourning, like The Case of the Late Pig published in 1937, was the author's finest achievement up to that time, and it remains a classic of the genre. A superlatively subtle book, fraught with complicated tensions and crowded with insights, it is remarkable for its sustained emotional force, its adroit social comedy, and its scrupulous rendering of every development in terms of human personality. It is at once stylish and clever as a whodunit, and mature and satisfying as a novel of character.

The action centers on Jimmy Sutane [an actor]….

[Sutane] is immensely, universally popular. He has "grace and skill," and "ease and dignity," and his "sophisticated, amused but utterly discontented intelligence" makes a "deep appeal" to all kinds of people—a Sutane show is "a recognized intellectual leveller." Even a little off-stage dance, a spontaneous release of nervous tension, strikes Campion as "amusing, stimulating and...