Author notes: Margery Allingham

Margery Allingham created one of my favorite sleuths, with one of the best supporting casts. Albert Campion, it should be mentioned, was the sort of character who grew up with both the times and his author. He's a bit silly and shallow early on, but only appears silly and shallow later on, when it suits his purposes.

From Masterpieces of Mystery: The Supersleuths, selected by Ellery Queen, Davis Publications, 1976, page 338, in the short story "One Morning They'll Hang Him":

Mr. Albert Campion, who had been staring idly out of the window watching the rain on the roofs, did not glance round. He was still the lean, somewhat ineffectual-looking man to whom the Special Branch had turned so often in the last twenty years. His very fair hair had bleached into whiteness and a few lines had appeared round the pale eyes which were still, as always, covered by large horn-rimmed spectacles, but otherwise he looked much as Kenny first remembered him - "Friendly and a little simple - the old snake!"

(From the same book, page 337, a thumbnail sketch of the author):

Margery Allingham was born in London in 1904, the eldest child of H. J. Allingham, whose serials appeared in the popular weeklies of the day. In 1927 she married Philip Youngman Carter, an artist, and the following year she wrote The Crime at Black Dudley, her first novel featuring the mild, bespectacled Albert Campion. Her novels before 1934 were mostly pure entertainment; those written later place her in the forefront of the generation of detection writers who attempted to fuse the police novel and the novel of character and psychology.