New Allingham audiobook.

Cover of 2015 Omnibus ed.
(in French) of Allingham's
The Crime at Black Dudley

New to Librivox's free audiobook catalog is Margery Allingham's The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), the first novel in her series with the mysterious sleuth Albert Campion. In the 2 June 1968 New York Times, Allen J. Hubin called The Crime at Black Dudley "a fine tale of death in an English country house."

Margery Allingham on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

This week on BBC Radio 4 Extra the amnesiac Albert Campion struggles to uncover his own identity in Traitor's Purse (one of the favorite mysteries of 1941). Go here for the schedule; episodes can usually be heard online for up to a week after broadcast.

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."

Happy birthday, Margery Allingham.

Margery Allingham, the creator of mysterious sleuth Albert Campion, was born today in 1904. She died in 1966.

You can read appreciations of her work in Margery Allingham: 100 Years of a Great Mystery Writer and the fall 2004 issue of Clues: A Journal of Detection, which was a theme issue on the occasion of her centenary (including an article on Allingham as book reviewer). Felony & Mayhem Press is reprinting the Campion works, and information on the Campion TV series starring Peter Davison may be found here.

I'm a particular fan of The Oaken Heart (1941), which is Allingham's penetrating account of the effect of World War II on her village, including the residents' caring for war refugees.

Stay tuned for the summer issue of Clues, which will include an article on Allingham's short stories.