A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY Agatha Christie called her a shining light. Have you discovered Margery Allingham, the 'true queen' of the classic murder mystery?

Fact catches up with fiction when the secret of telepathic communication is discovered. But the device at the centre of the mystery is in the possession of two schoolboys and whether they stole it or invented it, there are powerful interests who will kill to get hold of it. Private detective Albert Campion faces as deadly a challenge as any in his career.

As urbane as Lord Wimseyas ingenious as Poirot Meet one of crime fictions 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, andthe following year, inThe 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 asHide My EyesandThe 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.