A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY

John Lafcadios ambition to be known as the greatest painter since Rembrandt was not to be thwarted by a matter as trifling as his own death. A set of twelve sealed paintings is the bequest he leaves to his widow together with the instruction that she unveil one canvas each year before a carefully selected audience.

Albert Campion is among the cast of gadabouts, muses and socialites gathered for the latest ceremony but art is the last thing on the sleuths mind when a brutal stabbing occurs.

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?

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