Allingham, Margery

Allingham, Margery (ăl`ĭng-əm), 1904–66, English detective-story writer, b. London. Most of her novels feature Mr. Albert Campion, a scholarly detective of noble birth, bespectacled, mild, and believable. Her thrillers are intelligently written and noted for their adroit characterization and literate style. Among her more than 25 books are The Crime at Black Dudley (1928), Flowers for the Judge (1936), Black Plumes (1940), The Tiger in the Smoke (1952), and The Mind Reader (1965), her last.

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Allingham, Margery (Louise)

(born May 20, 1904, London, Eng.—died June 30, 1966, Colchester, Essex) British detective-story writer. She published her first story at age 8, her first novel at 19, and her first detective story in her early 20s. Her stories about the fictional detective Albert Campion became very popular, and such novels as Tiger in the Smoke (1952) and The China Governess (1962), with their intellectual style and psychological insight, helped win detective fiction consideration as a serious literary genre. The BBC produced adaptations of eight of her novels in the late 1980s.