Traitor's Purse

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? Celebrated detective Albert Campion awakes in hospital accused of attacking a police officer and suffering from acute amnesia. All he can remember is that he was on a mission of vital importance to His Majesty's government before his accident. On the run from the police and unable to recognise even his faithful servant Lugg or his own fiancee, Campion struggles desperately to put the pieces together while the very fate of England is at stake. 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.

"Allingham is the best of mystery writers" New Yorker "Always of the elect, Margery Allingham now towers above them" Observer "Don't start reading these books unless you are confident that you can handle addiction" Independent "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 "This novel has the most amazing plot of any thriller I know... A startlingly good book" -- A.S. Byatt Guardian