The Tiger in the Smoke

Meg Elginbrodde, a young war widow, receives photographs that suggest her husband is still alive so she enlists the help of her cousin, Albert Campion to investigate. The man in the photographs turns out to be a known felon, ‘Duds’ Morrison. Meg’s jealous fiancé, Geoffrey Levitt, accosts Duds but both men are attacked by a criminal gang posing as a rackety street band. Meanwhile, Meg’s father, Canon Avril, a gentle priest, wonders how Duds came to be wearing Meg’s husband’s coat. A tortuous trail leads through the oppressive London fog to Jack Havoc, a violent murderer. Set in a dingy and damaged post war London this is Allingham’s most sophisticated novel which examines the very nature of evil.

With an introduction by the New York Times-bestselling author of detective fiction, Sara Paretsky.

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Margery Allingham was born in London in 1904. The child of two writers, she grew up in the village of Layer Breton near Colchester and spent much of her childhood writing stories and plays. Her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, was published in 1923 when she was only 19. Her breakthrough came in 1929 with the publication of The Crime at Black Dudley, which introduced Albert Campion, the gentleman sleuth who went on to become her most famous character and featured in eighteen further novels and numerous short stories establishing her as one of the four queens of the golden age of crime. Margery Allingham died in 1966 and her husband, Philip Youngman Carter, completed her final Campion novel, The Cargo of Eagles.