The Beckoning Lady - by Margery Allingham (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Murder darkens the bright days of summer in an idyllic Suffolk village, in an Albert Campion mystery that is simply "unforgettable" (A.S. Byatt).

Private detective Albert Campion's glorious summer in Pontisbright is blighted by death. Amidst the preparations for Minnie and Tonker Cassand's fabulous summer party, a murder is discovered--and it falls to Campion to unravel the intricate web of motives, suspicion and deception.

Danger is hardly unknown in this idyllic rural village, but it is a less romantic peril than Campion faced on his first visit, more than twenty years ago . . .

"My very favourite of the four Queens of Crime is Allingham." --J. K. Rowling

"Margery Allingham has precious few peers and no superiors." --The Sunday Times

"Allingham has that rare gift in a novelist, the creation of characters so rich and so real that they stay with the reader forever." --Sara Paretsky

About the Author

Margery Allingham, born in 1904 to Emily and Herbert Allingham, was an esteemed English novelist, author, and editor of Christian Globe and the New London Journal. Considered one of the four "Queens of Crime" from the golden age of detective fiction, Allingham began writing stories and plays at a young age and published her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, at 19. She later studied drama and speech training at Regent Street Polytechnic in London. Allingham is best known for her character Albert Campion, a sleuth first introduced in The Crime of Black Dudley. Campion was featured in seventeen subsequent novels, and even more short stories. Allingham continued to write until her death on June 30, 1966.