THE FIRST CAMPION MYSTERY

'Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light' Agatha Christie

A suspicious death and a haunted family heirloom were not advertised when Dr George Abbershaw and a groupof London's brightest young things accepted an invitation to the mansion of Black Dudley.

Skulduggery is most certainly afoot, and the party-goers soon realise that they're trapped in the secluded house.

Amongst them is a stranger who promises to unravel the villainous plots behind their incarceration - but can George and his friends trust the peculiar young man who calls himself 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, andthe following year, inThe 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 asHide My EyesandThe 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.

Agatha Christie called her "a shining light". Have you discovered Margery Allingham, the 'true queen' of the classic murder mystery?>