The Fashion In Shrouds

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Agatha Christie called her 'a shining light'. Have you discovered Margery Allingham, the 'true queen' of the classic murder mystery? A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY Agatha Christie called her 'a shining light'. Have you discovered Margery Allingham, the 'true queen' of the classic murder mystery? First, there is a skeleton in a dinner jacket. Then a corpse in a golden aeroplane. After another body, private detective Albert Campion nearly makes a fourth... Both the skeleton and the corpse have died with suspicious convenience for Georgia Wells, a monstrous but charming actress with a raffish entourage. Georgia's best friend just happens to be Valentine, a top couturi re and Campion's sister. In order to protect Valentine, Campion must unravel a story of blackmail and ruthless murder. As urbane as Lord Wimsey...as ingenious as Poirot... Meet one of crime fiction's Great Detectives, Mr Albert Campion.

Margery Allingham was born in London in 1904. She sold her first story at age 8 and published her first novel before turning 20. She married the artist, journalist and editor Philip Youngman Carter in 1927. In 1928 Allingham published her first detective story, The White Cottage Mystery, and the following year, in The Crime at Black Dudley, she introduced the detective who was to become the hallmark of her sophisticated crime novels and murder mysteries - Albert Campion. Famous for her London thrillers, such as Hide My Eyes and The Tiger in the Smoke, Margery Allingham has been compared to Dickens in her evocation of the city's shady underworld. Acclaimed by crime novelists such as P.D. James, Allingham is counted alongside Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie and Gladys Mitchell as a pre-eminent Golden Age crime writer. Margery Allingham died in 1966.

"Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered" -- P.D. James "Allingham's work is always of the first rank" New York Times "Allingham was a contemporary of Agatha Christie but her work is thought by many to be more stylish and less pedestrian, with cunning plots and witty characters" Sunday Express "As addictive as cocaine, Allingham's stories feature spooky happenings and violent death" Independent