The return of Allingham's More Work for the Undertaker (1948).

Margery Allingham,  by
Philip Youngman Carter.
Photo courtesy of
B. A. Pike, 
Margery Allingham Soc.

Felony & Mayhem Press continues its noble goal of reprinting the work of Margery Allingham (1904–66) in handsome, affordable paperback editions with More Work for the Undertaker (1948), in which Albert Campion seeks to determine who killed Ruth Palinode, part of a very odd family in west London that includes the brother-in-law of Campion compadre Lugg.

Although Christopher Fowler states in this September piece for the Independent that "many of Allingham's books appear to have vanished into [...a] pea-souper,"  it should be remembered that Allingham's The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) was selected by the Times of London as one of the Best 100 Mysteries of the twentieth century and is particularly admired by Ed Gorman. In addition, fellow Golden Age author L. A. G. Strong stated that Allingham's "One Morning They'll Hang Him" [Allingham Case-Book, 1969], "with a looser texture and a more leisurely pace than those of most American writers, achieves an enviable symmetry, and her red herring, the call at the chemist's shop, is slipped in with Chekhovian adroitness."