Born into a family of writers, with `ink in her blood', Margery Allingham was a published author from the age of thirteen. With The Crime at Black Dudley (1929) she created the modest but brilliant detective Albert Campion and quickly became one of the biggest selling writers of mystery fiction.

Admired in her generation by her sister Queens of Crime - Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers, she continues to delight her fellow crime-writers today, many of whom have written appreciations of her work in this centenary volume.

The Margery Allingham Society has assembled thirty writers, among them Catherine Aird, HRF Keating, Jessica Mann, Sara Paretsky, Michelle Spring, Andrew Taylor and June Thomson, who contribute engaging essays to this volume. Together with personal friends and admirers of Allingham, they voice their appreciation and explore her work, not only as a mystery writer but also as one closely linked to her East Anglian roots, whose work ranged well outside the crime scene into the society of her day.

Margery Allingham's own work is represented here along with previously unpublished material from the Margery Allingham archive - short stories, articles, radio scripts and verse.

'...for many of us she is... up there jostling with Christie for the crown.'

Robert Barnard

‘Allingham-lond is a country in which I could live with the utmost happiness.'

Natasha Cooper

‘How sad I feel when I've read through all the books again, how jealous I feel of readers who've yet to start them.'

Sara Paretsky

£12.99

Cover design by Sands Thomas Design Ltd

with fond acknowledgement to Philip Youngman Carter.