Dancers in Mourning

Murder takes center stage when a song-and-dance man is targeted, in an Albert Campion whodunit from “the best of mystery writers” (The New Yorker).

When entertainer Jimmy Sutane falls victim to a string of malicious practical jokes, there’s only one man who can get to the bottom of the apparent vendetta against the music hall darling—gentleman sleuth Albert Campion. Soon, however, the backstage pranks escalate, and an aging starlet is killed. Under pressure to uncover the culprit and plagued by his growing feelings for Sutane’s wife, Campion finds himself uncomfortably embroiled in an investigation which tests his ingenuity—and integrity—to the limit.

“Allingham’s work is always of the first rank.” —The New York Times

Margery Allingham, born in 1904 to Emily and Herbert Allingham, was an esteemed English novelist, author, and editor of Christian Globe and the New London Journal. Considered one of the four “Queens of Crime” from the golden age of detective fiction, Allingham began writing stories and plays at a young age and published her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, at 19. She later studied drama and speech training at Regent Street Polytechnic in London. Allingham is best known for her character Albert Campion, a sleuth first introduced in The Crime of Black Dudley. Campion was featured in seventeen subsequent novels, and even more short stories. Allingham continued to write until her death on June 30, 1966.