It is, possibly, an unpopular opinion, but I don’t include Margery Allingham in the ‘Big Four’ of Golden Age women writers. I think the charge that Campion (and Lugg) were written as a direct copy – even parody – of Peter Wimsey (and Bunter) is well-founded; I suspect that her inclusion, like that of Ngaio Marsh who is often added to the roster, is based on quantity rather than quality; and the perceived need to describe a sisterhood leads to an unnecessary attempt to distinguish between first and second division players. 

Her novels feel, to me, as if they were written throughout with a knowing wink to the requirements of the genre but without any real flair or panache. They also don’t address meaningfully any great questions of her times, the characters are frequently wooden and/or stereotypes, she often uses class or disability almost as signifiers of criminality, and, in spite of her protagonist, Campion, maturing through the series, we never really see him as a fully-rounded person.

And yet, and yet…

Having said all that, Allingham did, in 1952, deliver what many consider to be one of the greatest novels of suspense, as well as, possibly, the best London Crime Novel. ‘The Tiger in the Smoke’ is the quintessential novel of the capital, all smog, odd characters, indistinct threat, rainy pavements, and anonymous metropolitan existence. If Allingham’s other novels can seem formulaic and repetitive, all is forgiven for this one book. It manages successfully to link into so many London tropes, as well as referring obliquely to myths and legends of the capital such as that of ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ and Jack the Ripper. The book consistently tops lists of ‘Best Mystery Novels’ and it was made into a film in the 1950s that quite successfully repeats the feeling of threat and terror in the fog. However, the ending disappoints, becoming more a ‘chase story’ and the final scenes are, frankly, bathos. In my pantheon of London Novels it thus misses out to Christianna Brand’s ‘London Particular’ and Josephine Bell’s ‘The Port of London Murders’, and none of these topple Marie Belloc Lowndes’ “The Lodger’ from its pole position.