Blackkerchief Dick Kindle Edition

• The stunning literary debut of Margery Allingham, the queen of crime fiction and creator of ALBERT CAMPION. • ‘Allingham is the best of mystery writers’ NEW YORK TIMES. • ‘My very favourite of the four Queens of Crime is Allingham’ J.K. ROWLING. • ‘Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light’ AGATHA CHRISTIE. The 1660s, Mersea Island. The shores of England’s easternmost inhabited island emerge imperceptibly from the gray waste of the North Sea, with stretches of low-tide mud that shine with a metallic lustre beyond the dunes. Here the beautiful Anny Farran in love with one man but terrified into marrying another – the villainous Spaniard, Dick Delfazio, better known as Blackkerchief Dick, play out a tragedy amongst a motley crew of rum-fuelled seafarers, smugglers and islanders. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Margery Allingham was born in Ealing, West London in 1904 into a literary family. Both her parents were writers and journalists, and Margery began writing at an early age receiving her first fee, aged just eight for a story published in one of her aunt’s magazines. She continued to write through her school days and published her first novel, BLACKKERCHIEF DICK, in 1923. Her breakthrough book, THE CRIME AT BLACK DUDLEY, was published in 1929 and introduced the character she would be best remembered for, gentleman sleuth Albert Campion. Initially created as a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers's detective Lord Peter Wimsey, Campion matured into a strongly individual character, part-detective, part-adventurer, who formed the basis for 18 novels and many short stories. By the mid 30s crime fiction had exploded in popularity and sheer output and Allingham, together with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngiao Marsh began to dominate this ‘Golden Age of Crime’ and became known as the ‘four Queens of Crime’. She died in 1966. PRAISE FOR MARGERY ALLINGHAM ‘Allingham is the best of mystery writers’ NEW YORK TIMES ‘Margery Allingham stands out like a shining light’ AGATHA CHRISTIE ‘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 ‘The best of mystery writers’ THE NEW YORKER ‘Margery Allingham deserves to be rediscovered’ P.D. JAMES ‘The real queen of crime’ THE GUARDIAN ‘As addictive as cocaine’ THE INDEPENDENT ‘One of the finest golden age crime novelists’ THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH Read more