On C.T.C. Wall's suspension theorem

Abstract

Almost forty years ago, C.T.C. Wall systematically analyzed the set of "thickenings" of a finite CW complex. Of the results he obtained, probably the most computationally important is the "suspension theorem," which is an exact sequence relating the n-dimensional thickenings of a finite complex to its (n+1)-dimensional ones. The object of this note is to fill in what we believe is a missing argument in the proof of that theorem.