Marjorie Louise Allingham is an English writer belonging to the “golden age of English literature,” hailed as the “queen of detective fiction” alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. Ellingham’s most famous works are her books about the gentleman sleuth Albert Campion. This volume includes the fourth, fifth, and sixth novels of her main series.
John Lafcadio, who believed himself to be the greatest artist after Rembrandt, before his death packed and sealed twelve of his paintings and bequeathed them to be ceremonially presented to the public—one each year on the anniversary of the day he died. Seven times this eccentric ritual went smoothly, but on the eighth it was interrupted by a murder, the investigation of which falls to Campion.