An award
winning masterpiece by the Queen of Crime
The latest HarperCollins reprint of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Agatha
Christies’s sixth novel, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, was voted ‘the best crime
novel ever’ by the British Crime Writers’ Association in 2013.
Published in
1926, the book remains Agatha’s best known and most controversial novel because
of its ingenious final twist, which had a significant impact on the detective
fiction genre and has been imitated by many other writers since.
Agatha, who
died on 12 January, 1976 - 47 years ago today - has become famous for being the supreme
exponent of the old-fashioned English crime novel. Her skill in constructing
complex and puzzling plots and her ability to deceive readers until the very
last page, or paragraph, are unequalled.
But this
third Poirot novel, narrated by the local physician, Doctor Sheppard, in the
absence of Captain Hastings, who has gone to start a new life in the Argentine,
is considered by many readers and critics to be her masterpiece.
Wealthy
businessman turned country squire Roger Ackroyd lives in a charming English
country village, where dark secrets and dangerous emotions lurk beneath the
apparently calm surface.
When Ackroyd
is murdered, stabbed in the neck while sitting in his study after a dinner
party at his home, there are, as usual, plenty of suspects.
Poirot, who
has just come to live in the village, after retiring to grow marrows,
lives next door to Dr Sheppard. He is asked by a member of Ackroyd’s family to
investigate the murder because they are worried the police will get it wrong. Suspicion
has fallen on Ackroyd’s stepson, Ralph, who is a popular young man locally.
Agatha Christie died 47 years ago today at the age of 85
After many
twists and turns, Poirot gathers all the suspects together in his sitting room
after dinner one night and reveals the extraordinary and unexpected identity of
the killer.
According to
The Home of Agatha Christie, the author’s own website, The Murder of Roger
Ackroyd was ‘the book that changed Agatha Christie’s career’. It was the first
of her novels to be published by William Collins, which later became part of
HarperCollins, who remain Agatha’s publishers today and attracted enormous
attention in the media at the time.
Following her death, Agatha Christie's body was buried four days later after a service at St
Mary’s Church in the village of Cholsey in Oxfordshire.
The
inscription on her tombstone is a quotation from Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie
Queen:
‘Sleepe
after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after
war, death after life, does greatly please.’
Campion
risks his life to try to bring an audacious killer to justice
The Vintage edition of Death of a Ghost
Death
of a Ghost, Margery Allingham’s sixth novel to feature the gentleman adventurer Albert
Campion, was first published in the UK in 1934.
In
a note about Campion at the beginning of the book, the author observes that her
hero is an adventurer, whose exploits are sometimes picaresque, as in Mystery
Mile and Sweet Danger, but he sometimes faces grave difficulties, as in Police
at the Funeral. She warns that Death of a Ghost falls into the second category.
When
the story starts, preparations are being made for a party at the London home of
John Lafcadio, an artist who has been dead for 18 years. It is the eve of the
annual ceremony for the unveiling of one of the series of 12 paintings he has left
behind in a bid to keep his memory alive.
Campion,
who is a friend of the painter’s widow, Belle, visits her the day before the
ceremony and attends the unveiling occasion the following evening. When the
ceremony is interrupted by a daring and particularly brutal murder, Campion
calls in his good friend, Inspector Stanislaus Oates to investigate.
Suspicion
falls on a member of the family, but the police can’t find enough proof to make
an arrest. But when another murder is committed at the property, Campion decides
to investigate for himself to help his old friend, Belle.
I
found the novel slow at first, while lots of characters were being introduced
and described. The action didn’t really get under way until page 50.
Throughout
the novel, Campion seems passive, not behaving at all like the action man that
he was in Sweet Danger.
In
another departure from her previous stories, Margery reveals that Campion has
guessed the identity of the killer and names the person about 100 pages from the end of the book. He
says he has no means of proving it and fears for Belle’s safety, lamenting to
Inspector Oates that he is being outwitted by the killer.
Campion
seems strangely trusting to accept an invitation for a drink at the suspect’s
apartment and then to go out to dinner with a person he feels sure has committed
two murders.
Peter Davison played Albert Campion in a BBC TV adaptation of Death of a Ghost
He
allows himself to fall into a trap set for him by the suspect and then the
action heats up with Campion’s life in danger.
The
writer Margery Allingham was born in 1904 in London and began writing at the
age of eight when she had a story published in a magazine.
Her
first novel was published when she was 19, but she did not make her
breakthrough as a crime writer until her novel, The Crime at Black Dudley, was
published in 1929. This introduced her series detective, Albert Campion, even
though he appeared only as a minor character in her first book.
He
was at first thought to be a parody of Dorothy L Sayers’s hero, Lord Peter
Wimsey, but Campion matured as the series of books progressed and proved there
was a lot more to him, becoming increasingly popular with readers.
Margery
Allingham is regarded as one of the four great Queens of Crime from the Golden
Age of detective fiction. One of her fellow Queens of Crime, Agatha Christie, once
said of the author: “Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light.”
Reviewers
have identified Death of A Ghost as a proper detective story rather than a high-spirited
thriller, but it differs from other detective stories of the time by having the
sleuth identify the killer and share his knowledge with the reader considerably
before the end of the book. The reader must wait for proof that Campion is right
and to find out whether the police will have enough evidence to arrest the suspect
and bring him to justice. But like all good mystery writers, Margery keeps a
few surprises up her sleeve until the end of the story.
Death
of a Ghost was filmed for the BBC in 1960, when Campion was played by Bernard
Horstall, and then again in 1989, when the role was played by Peter Davison.
Vintage
Books, part of the Penguin Random House Group, have now republished all
Margery’s novels featuring her series detective Albert Campion.
Author
departs from tradition by letting her detective fall in love
Strong Poison is the fifth of Dorothy L Sayers's Wimsey novels
Dorothy L
Sayers allows her noble sleuth to have a love interest in Strong Poison, the
fifth novel she wrote featuring the exploits of amateur detective Lord Peter
Wimsey.
The author
introduces the character of Harriet Vane, a crime novelist, who, like Wimsey,
is Oxford educated and has had an unhappy time romantically.
When Wimsey
sees Harriet Vane for the first time, she is in the dock, accused of the murder
of her ex-lover, the poet Philip Boyes.
Strong
Poison, which was published in 1930, is considered to be a major departure for a
Golden Age mystery as it shows the detective falling in love with a woman
accused of the murder that is central to the plot.
Dorothy L
Sayers fans have speculated that the writer modelled Harriet Vane on herself. The
writer had suffered a romantic disappointment and by creating the long-drawn-out
romance between Harriet Vane and Wimsey, which was to run through four novels,
it allowed her to have a vicarious affair with the detective herself, far-fetched
though this might seem now.
Dorothy had
been very impressed with the novel Trent’s Last Case by E C Bentley, published
in 1913. In the story, the detective, Philip Trent, falls in love with the wife
of the murder victim.
Right until the end of the novel the reader does not know
for certain that the wife is not the murderer. E C Bentley’s novel was intended
as a send up of the classic crime story and it also involves the hero detective
identifying the wrong person as the murderer close to the end of the story,
completely at odds with the conventions of the genre. But Dorothy, along with
many other readers, really liked the novel and went on record as saying that
Bentley’s novel ‘holds a very special place in the history of detective fiction.’
In Strong
Poison, the victim, Harriet’s ex-lover Philip Boyes, has died from arsenic poisoning.
He has attempted to engineer a reconciliation with Harriet on the night of his
death and she has given him a cup of coffee while listening to what he had to
say. She is accused of the murder because she is found to have bought poison
under an assumed name. She has claimed this was to test one of the plot points
in the crime novel she is currently writing.
Sayers herself had suffered a romantic disappointment
Fortunately,
the trial results in a hung jury and the judge has to order a retrial. With no
time to lose, Wimsey visits Harriet in prison to tell her he is convinced of
her innocence and is determined to catch the real murderer. He also asks her to
marry him, but she turns him down politely.
The jury has
failed to return a unanimous verdict because one person sitting on it could not
bring herself to believe in Harriet’s guilt. This is Miss Katharine Climpson, a
spinster who, coincidentally, sometimes works for Wimsey by carrying out
inquiries and undercover work because she has to live in difficult financial circumstances
and needs to earn some money.
As well as being
an intriguing mystery, Strong Poison explores some of the issues of the time,
such as sex before marriage and the double standards that were applied to the
behaviour of men and women. The novel is intricately plotted and written in a
very entertaining style and I would highly recommend that you read it.
The cover of the 2017 edition, published by Harper Collins
Agatha
Christie once again chose the adventure story format for her fifth novel, The
Secret of Chimneys, rather than the detective story conventions she had
employed in her first and third novels, which both featured her Belgian sleuth,
Hercule Poirot.
Published in
1925, The Secret of Chimneys details the exploits of a good-looking young
adventurer, Anthony Cade. The story starts in Africa, moves to England and is
influenced by the political intrigues going on in the Balkan state of Herzoslovakia.
Needing
money and looking for a new adventure, Cade accepts two jobs from a friend. He
has to deliver some potentially controversial political memoirs safely to a
publisher in London and restore some stolen letters to a woman who has been blackmailed
because of them.
Linking
these two jobs is an English country house called Chimneys, which is famous for
hosting informal weekend parties, where politicians, heads of corporations and
foreign dignitaries are able to mingle socially and conduct their business privately
in its comfortable surroundings.
A shooting
party is to take place at Chimneys, to be hosted reluctantly by its owner, Lord
Caterham, who has been asked to assist the Government. Prince Michael of
Oblovic is to be a guest at the party and it is anticipated that important
Government business will be done.
In the
course of carrying out his tasks, Cade goes to Chimneys himself. A murder
occurs in the house just after he arrives, starting off a series of fast-paced
events. Cade finds himself caught up in an international conspiracy and it soon
becomes obvious that someone will stop at nothing to prevent the monarchy being
restored in faraway Herzoslovakia.
ITV reimagined the story as a Miss Marple mystery, with Julie McKenzie as Marple
Despite the
presence in the house of officers from both Scotland Yard and the French Surete,
Cade has to pursue his own ideas in order to find the murderer, to be with Virginia,
the woman he has fallen in love with, and ultimately fulfil his own destiny.
Agatha
Christie, who was born 132 years ago today in 1890, was widely praised for
writing The Secret of Chimneys. Reviewers said it was more than just a murder
mystery as it involved a treasure hunt. In July 1925, TheTimes Literary
Supplement praised the ‘most unexpected and highly satisfactory ending’ of the
story.
The novel has
since been called ‘a first-class romp’ and been judged to be one of the
author’s best early thrillers. I thought it was a light-hearted caper and found
it enjoyable to read. I admired the way Agatha kept the ‘secret’ of Chimneys up
her sleeve right to the end.
The novel introduced
the characters of Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard and Lady Eileen
‘Bundle’ Brent, who were both to appear in later novels.
It was the
last of Agatha’s crime novels to be published by Bodley Head as the author then
moved to Collins, later to become Harper Collins. It is known to have been
translated into 17 different languages.
The Secret
of Chimneys was adapted as a stage play by Agatha in 1931, but its world
premiere did not actually take place until 2003 in Canada. It has also been
adapted for television and as a graphic novel, although a version made by ITV in 2010 turned it into a Miss Marple mystery and took several other liberties with the plot.
The
fictional Eastern European country of Herzoslovakia is also referenced in two
Poirot stories, The Stymphalian Birds and One, Two, Buckle My Shoe.
Agatha went
on to become such a popular and successful novelist that even though we are now
well into the 21st century, her books are still being purchased from shops and
online and are regularly borrowed from public libraries. New film and
television adaptations of her wonderful stories are constantly being made and
she remains the most translated individual author to this day.
A detective
novelist who brilliantly describes backstage life
Ngaio Marsh, who
was one of the leading female detective novelists of her time, died on this day
– 18 February – in 1982 in her native New Zealand.
Ngaio began
writing detective novels in 1931 after moving to London to start up an interior
decorating business. Stuck in her
basement flat on a very wet Saturday afternoon she decided to have a go at
writing a detective story and came up with the idea for her sleuth, Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective.
Ngaio Marsh came to be seen as one of the Queens of Crime
She sat down
to write what was to be the first of a series of 32 crime novels featuring Alleyn,
who she named after an Elizabethan actor, Edward Alleyn. Her detective was to work
for the Metropolitan Police in London, even though he is the younger brother of
a baronet.
Her second
novel, Enter a Murderer, published in 1935, and several others, are set in the
world of the theatre, which Ngaio knew well as she was also an actress,
director and playwright at times during her life.
After leaving
school she had studied painting before joining a touring theatre company. She
became a member of an art association in New Zealand and continued to exhibit
her paintings with them from the 1920s onwards.
Ngaio allows her
detective, Alleyn, to meet and fall in love with an artist, Agatha Troy, in her 1938 novel, Artists in Crime.
She directed
many productions of Shakespeare’s plays in New Zealand and Australia and the
430-seat Ngaio Marsh Theatre at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand is
named in her honour.
In her 1946
short story, I Can Find My Way Out, which features Alleyn, Ngaio once again
uses the theatre as her setting. A new playwright, Anthony Gill, is waiting
nervously for the premiere of his first play at The Jupiter Theatre in London.
The female
lead, Coralie Bourne, has been kind to him and advised him on his play, but the
male lead, Canning Cumberland, is known to have a drinking problem and can be
unpredictable, which worries Gill. Two of the other actors also resent Cumberland,
one because he was given the best part and the other because he was given the
best dressing room.
Meanwhile,
Roderick Alleyn and his now wife Troy are entertaining a friend, Lord Michael
Lamprey, for dinner. He is keen to join the police but his conversation with Alleyn
is constantly interrupted by phone calls that are actually meant for a delivery
firm. When one of the callers asks if they can deliver a suitcase to playwright Anthony Gill at the Jupiter Theatre, Lord Michael thinks it would be fun to
take the job as he has been unable to get a ticket to see the play.
Sophie Hannah's collection of stories is published by Apollo
Before he
reaches the theatre, the case falls open and he discovers a false ginger beard
and moustache, a black hat, a black overcoat with a fur collar and a pair of
black gloves.
On an impulse
Lord Michael puts the whole outfit on and insists on being allowed to deliver
the case in person to the playwright backstage.
As Coralie makes
one of her exits from the stage, she sees him standing in the wings wearing the
beard and black clothes and faints. The male lead, Cumberland, also reacts with
horror when he sees him and locks himself in his dressing room.
Lord Michael
continues to watch the play from the wings with fascination, although he becomes
increasingly aware of the smell of gas. Eventually, he traces the smell to one
of the dressing rooms, gains access and drags out the unconscious occupant, but
sadly it is too late to save him.
He rings
Alleyn and the detective arrives at the theatre with his men, where it does not
take him long to discover that one of the actors has been murdered.
In just 18
pages, Ngaio sets up the story, establishes the characters and their
relationships, brilliantly describes the dressing rooms, equipment and
atmosphere backstage, drawing on her experience of the theatre, and allows
Alleyn to solve the crime.
Along with
her fellow Queens of Crime, Margery Allingham, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L
Sayers, Ngaio was to dominate the genre of crime fiction from the 1930s onwards
with her novels, short stories and plays.
In 1948 Ngaio
was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services in
connection with drama and literature in New Zealand. She became a Dame
Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts in the
1966 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Ngaio’s autobiography,
Black Beech and Honeydew was published in 1965. She was inducted into the
Detection Club in 1974 and received the Grand Master Award for lifetime
achievement as a detective novelist from the Mystery Writers of America.
Her 32nd and
final Alleyn novel, Light Thickens, was completed only a few weeks before her
death. The story revolves around one of her greatest theatrical passions,
Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.
Ngaio died in
her home town of Christchurch and was buried at the Church of the Holy
Innocents, Mount Peel.
The Ngaio
Marsh Award is given annually to the writer of the best New Zealand mystery,
crime or thriller novel. Her home in Christchurch is now a museum and displays her
collection of antiques. On her desk lies her fountain pen filled with green ink,
which was her preferred writing tool.
Ngaio Marsh’s
32 Roderick Alleyn crime novels and her collections of short stories are available in a variety of
formats from or
But before Campion
and Joyce have even left London for Cambridge, they find out that the body of
Uncle Andrew has been found in a river. He had been bound hand and foot with
cord and shot in the head.
In this
fourth novel to feature the mysterious Mr Campion, the author, Margery Allingham, allows
hints to be dropped by one of the characters that Campion is from a prominent
British aristocratic family, giving the reader a tantalising clue about who he really is.
Campion
takes Joyce back to Socrates Close, the large old house where she lives with her
Great Aunt, Caroline Faraday, the widow of a famous Cambridge academic, and the other members of the strange and dysfunctional family, who she helps Mrs
Faraday to take care of.
From the
previous novels, we know that Campion is well-educated, with quiet authority
and that he is not afraid to put himself in danger to help others. He lives
above a police station in London with an eccentric manservant and is reputed to
be a good man to call upon in a crisis. He appears to be more of a gentleman
adventurer than a private detective.
Nevertheless,
he goes to Socrates Close to meet the formidable Caroline Faraday, who, because
she thinks she knows his family, invites him to stay.
He uses his
skill and experience to work out what is going on at Socrates Close when a second member
of the family dies and another one is injured while they are both still inside the
house.
Peter Davison played Campion in a BBC TV adaptation of Margery Allingham's novels
Campion follows
up the clues he finds, such as the mysterious symbol drawn on the outside of one of
the library windows and a huge footprint found in the flower bed below.
Although he
works alongside his policeman friend, Stanislaus Oates, a senior Scotland Yard
detective, it is Campion who works out what has been happening in the house and
exposes the person responsible.
Police at
the Funeral, the fourth Campion novel, was published in Britain in 1931 and is the first
of the series not to have organised crime as a plot element. Instead, it is about
a wealthy family living together in a big house who are constantly having petty
squabbles. It is the first real detective story by Margery and is considered by
many of her readers to be one of her best novels.
She was later judged to be
one of the four Queens of Crime, along with her contemporaries, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers
and Ngaio Marsh, who were also writing during the Golden Age of detective
fiction.
A fast-moving thriller that keeps the reader guessing until the end
The latest paperback edition of The Man in the Brown Suit
Reading Agatha Christie’s novels again in order of publication is proving to be good fun because there is so much variety in the early stories as Agatha tries out new characters and different slants on the detective mystery format.
Agatha’s fourth novel, The Man in the Brown Suit, published in 1924, is very different from The Mysterious Affair at Styles and The Murder on the Links, the first two Poirot novels and also nothing like The Secret Adversary, her first Tommy and Tuppence novel.
The novel has a pretty young heroine, Anne Beddingfield, who has long yearned for adventures, love and romance. When her professor father dies, leaving her alone in the world with a very small sum of money, she heads to London, where she witnesses the death of a man who falls from the platform at an underground station and is electrocuted on the rails.
The police decide it is an accidental death but Anne wonders about a man in a brown suit who she saw examine the body before running away. She has picked up a piece of paper that had been dropped nearby and armed with just one cryptic clue she vows to track down the man in the brown suit and achieve justice for the dead man. The message on the paper eventually leads to her boarding a ship bound for South Africa.
According to the official Agatha Christie website, the novel was partly inspired by a tour Agatha had made of the British Commonwealth with her first husband. Afterwards, Agatha wrote the story sitting in her Earl’s Court flat, finding inspiration for her descriptions of African landscapes by evoking her memories of them.
The Man in the Brown Suit is the first of her novels to feature an appearance by Secret Service agent Colonel Race, who assists Anne in her search for the truth. Colonel Race reappears in three later novels, Cards on the Table, Death on the Nile and Sparkling Cyanide.
Agatha Christie used her first payment from her fourth novel to buy a Morris Cowley like this one
Towards the end of the story, Agatha describes Anne’s feelings as she falls in love very convincingly and in a complete departure from the style of her writing in her previous three novels.
However, she keeps the reader guessing as to the identity of the villain right until the end of the book in true Agatha Christie style.
The Man in the Brown Suit is less a novel of detection and more of a fast-moving thriller that is typical of its period. It had mixed reviews when it was first published because some reviewers were disappointed that it was not a Poirot novel. This seems rather unfair. Surely, they would have realised that authors like to experiment?
It was not all bad news for Agatha though, as the £500 she received for the first publication of this story paid for her first car, a grey, bullnose Morris Cowley.
Even though the novel is nearly 100 years old, I would definitely recommend giving The Man in the Brown Suit a try.
This collection brings together some top crime writers
The dark days leading up to the festive season, when people face the prospect of meeting up with distant relatives and staying in cold and uncomfortable houses, has inspired many a good Christmas crime story.
There is always the prospect of the house being cut off because of severe weather and of ancient grudges resurfacing as the wine flows.
Most of the Golden Age detective novelists have had a crack at a Christmas crime story either in the form of a full-length novel or a short story.
Many of these have recently been reprinted and given new front covers and are now entertaining a brand-new audience.
Some have been made into films that provide perfect entertainment for people replete with Christmas dinner as they snuggle down in front of the fire and watch other people’s Christmas parties ending with a murder.
The four Queens of Crime all turned out their fair share of Christmas murder mysteries, many of them going on to become popular films.
Their short Christmas stories were originally written for magazines, but we are now able to enjoy them again as they come out in anthologies.
I can recommend a short story by Margery Allingham,The Case Is Altered, which has been included in Murder Under the Christmas Tree – Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season.
Margery Allingham's short story is well worth reading
Mr Albert Campion is going to spend Christmas at Sir Phillip Cookham’s country home in Norfolk. Cookham is a kindly, mild-mannered Cabinet minister, but his wife Florence, a distant relative of Campion’s, loves to host big Christmas parties, with all the festive trimmings, several Christmas trees and an odd assortment of guests.
Campion finds himself sharing a railway carriage with some of his fellow guests and even before the train reaches its destination, a station near a country house called Underhill, he is aware of tensions between some of the people who have been invited.
A note pushed under the door of the neighbouring guest room adds to his feeling of unease and even though the recipient thinks he is being invited to a romantic tryst, Campion has the feeling something more sinister is going on.
In less than 25 pages, Margery provides us with an intriguing mystery, that is full of Christmas atmosphere and shows her detective, Campion, at his best as he solves the case in his usual self -effacing way.
Murder Under the Christmas Tree, published by Profile Books, also has stories by Dorothy L Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Edmund Crispin and G K Chesterton.
Remembering Agatha Christie’s writing roots on the anniversary of her birth
As a child, Agatha Christie taught herself to read
Agatha Christie, who was to become the best-selling novelist of all time, was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on 15 September 1890 in a district of Torquay in Devon.
Her arrival at the home of her parents, Ashfield, in Barton Road in Tor Mohun, took place 131 years ago today. Agatha became such a popular and successful novelist that even though we are now well into the 21st century, her books are still being purchased from shops and on line and are regularly borrowed from public libraries. New film and television adaptations of her wonderful stories are constantly being made and she remains the most translated individual author to this day.
Agatha was educated at home and even though her mother did not want her to learn to read until she was eight, Agatha had taught herself to read by the time she was five.
She enjoyed the children’s stories of her time by authors such as Edith Nesbit and Louisa M Alcott, but also read poetry and thrillers at a young age.
By the time she was 18 she was writing short stories herself and had learnt French from her governess, the family having spent time living in France. This was to come in useful when she invented her little Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. She also visited Cairo for three months with her mother, an experience she was to draw on later for some of her novels.
The latest edition of Christie's 1920 debut novel
It was during the First World War that she turned to writing detective stories while she was working in a hospital dispensary. She responded to a bet made with her sister Madge, who challenged her to try to write a good detective story, and she worked out the plot for her debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, while working at Torbay Hospital. She had recently completed the examination of the Society of Apothecaries and was able to put her newly acquired knowledge of poisons to good use.
Agatha was unsuccessful to begin with and suffered six consecutive rejections from publishers. If she’d given up at that point the world would never have had the huge body of work that has entertained so many millions of people over the years.
The turning point came for Agatha when her novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920, when she was 30 years of age, and she never looked back. She went on to write a total of 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections. She also wrote the world’s longest running play, The Mousetrap, which was performed in London’s West End from 1952 to 2020, when the theatre had to be closed down because of Covid 19 restrictions.
Her novel And Then There Were None is one of the top-selling books of all time, with approximately 100 million copies sold.
Agatha was co-president of the elite Detection Club from 1958 to her death in 1976. In the 1971 New Year Honours she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
When her death was announced, two West End theatres, St Martin’s, where The Mousetrap was playing, and the Savoy, which was at the time staging Murder at the Vicarage, dimmed their outside lights in her honour.
Her novels have never gone out of print and are constantly being republished with new cover designs and in different formats.
Third Campion mystery features an ancient relic, witches, gypsies and a ruthless gang
Look to the Lady involves Campion searching for a 'monster' hiding in Suffolk woodland
Margery Allingham was well into her stride writing about her mysterious, amateur sleuth, Albert Campion, when she published her third novel about his adventures, Look to the Lady, in 1931, just two years after his first appearance in The Crime at Black Dudley.
Campion and his butler and ex-offender sidekick, Magersfonteing Lugg, rescue the son of a baronet, Val Gyrth, from violent criminals attempting to kidnap him. They offer to help him prevent the theft of a rare family heirloom, the Gyrth Chalice, but as soon as they arrive with him at his family home in Suffolk, they discover his aunt has been found dead in mysterious circumstances.
Campion sets out to solve the mystery of the aunt’s death and work out how to protect the valuable chalice, which the Gyrth family have been guarding for the nation for more than a thousand years.
To solve the mystery, Campion has to go out with an elderly professor to try to find the ‘monster’ hiding in nearby woodland that has been terrorising the local people for years.
Look to the Lady has been republished by Vintage Books
After infiltrating the headquarters of the gang plotting to steal the chalice, Campion is imprisoned by them, until a band of gypsies helps him to escape.
Then he has to ride a wild, black horse five miles across open countryside to be in time to prevent the theft of the chalice from its home high up in a tower.
Although Margery Allingham was writing during the Golden Age of detective fiction, Look to the Lady is less of a cosy, village mystery and more of a sophisticated, fast-moving novel of suspense.
Agatha Christie has been quoted as saying: ‘Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light,’ and, in her day, Margery was regarded as one of the four Queens of Crime, along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Ngaio Marsh.
Look to the Lady was first published in Great Britain by Jarrolds more than 90 years ago, but it has now been republished by Vintage Books, part of the Penguin Random House Group. It remains an exciting, addictive page turner and I can highly recommend it.
Remembering the brilliant writing of Margery Allingham
Margery Allingham wrote 18 novels featuring her detective, Albert Campion
Crime novelist Margery Allingham, who died on this day in 1966, was a prolific writer during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction.
She left a legacy of 18 Albert Campion mysteries, six volumes of short stories featuring the detective and many stand-alone novels, novellas and volumes of short stories. With Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Ngaio Marsh she became known as one of the four Queens of Crime.
Margery died of cancer in hospital in Colchester six weeks after her 62nd birthday. She was in the process of writing her last novel, Cargo of Eagles, and had mapped out the story long before her death, so that her husband, Philip Youngman Carter, was able to finish it as she herself would have done, according to her plan.
In a preface to Mr Campion’s Clowns, an omnibus of novels by Margery Allingham, published in 1967, Youngman Carter paid tribute to his late wife as ‘a generous, kind and courageous woman with a rare gift for friendship’.
Margery showed wonderful insight into character and her books abound in witty and accurate observations of people, with an especially keen eye for an eccentric. As she matured as a writer, her books became deeper and started to encompass significant themes, such as love and justice, good and evil, and illusion and truth. Her works have now attained classic status and she has, at times been compared to Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson
The Crime at Black Dudley was Allingham's breakthrough
Her first novel was published when she was 19, but she did not make her breakthrough as a crime writer until her novel, The Crime at Black Dudley, was published in 1929. This introduced her series detective, the gentleman sleuth Albert Campion, even though he appeared only as a minor character in her first book.
He was at first thought to be a parody of Sayers’ hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, but Campion matured as the series of books progressed and proved there was a lot more to him, and he became increasingly popular with readers.
Vintage Books, part of the Penguin Random House Group, have now republished all Margery Allingham’s novels featuring her series detective Albert Campion, making it likely that some will eventually be stocked by public libraries.
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.jpg "ITV reimagined the story as a Miss Marple mystery, with Julie McKenzie as Marple")
