Mystery Mile

Description

Judge Crowdy Lobbett has found evidence pointing to the identity of the criminal mastermind behind the deadly Simister gang. After four attempts on his life, he ends up seeking the help of the enigmatic and unorthodox amateur sleuth, Albert Campion. After Campion bundles Lobbett off to a country house in Mystery Mile deep in the Suffolk countryside, all manner of adventures ensue. It's a race against time for Campion to get the judge to safety and decipher the clue to their mysterious enemy's name. Luckily for Judge Lobbett, underneath his constant stream of nonsensical banter, Campion displays a diamond-sharp intelligence and a natural detective's instinct...

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.

"Allingham is the best of mystery writers" New Yorker "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 "Miss Allingham's strength lies in her power of characterisation, in her striking talent for painting the social background against which she shows her characters, in her skill in the use of words whereby she paints so vividly the scene she describes" Guardian "After an unaccountable lapse, Allingham's crime list is back in fashion" Daily Mail