More Work for the Undertaker

Description

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? In a masterpiece of storytelling, Margery Allingham sends her elegant and engaging detective Albert Campion into the eccentric Palinode household, where there have been two suspicious deaths. And if poisoning were not enough, there are also anonymous letters, sudden violence and a vanishing coffin. Meanwhile the Palinodes go about their nocturnal business and Campion dices with danger in his efforts to find the truth. 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.

"As addictive as cocaine, Allingham's stories feature spooky happenings and violent death" Independent "One of the finest "golden age" crime novelists" Sunday Telegraph "Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered" "Allingham's characters are three-dimensional flesh and blood, especially her villains" Times Literary Supplement