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    Hide My Eyes
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    Hide My Eyes
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    Hide My Eyes
    Ebook290 pages4 hours

    Hide My Eyes

    By Margery Allingham

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Private detective Albert Campion hunts a serial killer in London’s theatre district, in this crime novel from “the best of mystery writers” (The New Yorker).
     
    A spate of murders leaves Campion with only two baffling clues: a left-hand glove and a lizard-skin letter-case. These minimal leads, and a series of peculiar events, set the gentleman sleuth on a race against time that takes him from an odd museum of curiosities hidden in a quiet corner of London to a scrapyard in the East End.
     
    Margery Allingham shows her dark edge in Hide My Eyes and evokes the sights, sounds, and inimitable atmosphere of 1950s London, once again proving herself “one of the finest ‘golden age’ crime novelists” (Sunday Telegraph).
     
    “Allingham has that rare gift in a novelist, the creation of characters so rich and so real that they stay with the reader forever.” —Sara Paretsky
     
    “Allingham’s characters are three-dimensional flesh and blood, especially her villains.” —Times Literary Supplement
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 1, 2015
    ISBN9781504048743
    Unavailable
    Hide My Eyes
    Author

    Margery Allingham

    Margery Louise Allingham is ranked among the most distinguished and beloved detective fiction writers of the Golden Age alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh. Allingham is J.K. Rowling's favourite Golden Age author and Agatha Christie said of Allingham that out of all the detective stories she remembers, Margery Allingham 'stands out like a shining light'. She was born in Ealing, London in 1904 to a very literary family; her parents were both writers, and her aunt ran a magazine, so it was natural that Margery too would begin writing at an early age. She wrote steadily through her school days, first in Colchester and later as a boarder at the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge, where she wrote, produced, and performed in a costume play. After her return to London in 1920 she enrolled at the Regent Street Polytechnic, where she studied drama and speech training in a successful attempt to overcome a childhood stammer. There she met Phillip Youngman Carter, who would become her husband and collaborator, designing the jackets for many of her future books. The Allingham family retained a house on Mersea Island, a few miles from Layer Breton, and it was here that Margery found the material for her first novel, the adventure story Blackkerchief Dick (1923), which was published when she was just nineteen. She went on to pen multiple novels, some of which dealt with occult themes and some with mystery, as well as writing plays and stories – her first detective story, The White Cottage Mystery, was serialized in the Daily Express in 1927. Allingham died at the age of 62, and her final novel, A Cargo of Eagles, was finished by her husband at her request and published posthumously in 1968.

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    Reviews for Hide My Eyes

    4/5

    94 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Another surprisingly good book, with little mystery but quite a lot of suspense, and something under the surface a moral perhaps. Unlike most stories with Mr. Campion though, he plays more of a supporting role in this one.
    • 5/5
      I enjoyed this one. Good and scary. Campion is in this book, but as a supporting character. The police are the ones who solve this one.
    • 5/5
      Definitely one of Allingham's best (of the works that I've read), the action starts as a man pulls up in a bus into a cul-de-sac in London called Goff Place. The bus is carrying two elderly people, fast asleep, who stay that way throughout the bus being stopped, the driver getting off the bus and making a phone call, and the murder of a pawnbroker whose body was still missing. Even though there was no corpse, a long trail of blood led back to where the bus had been parked. Some time later, a young woman and young man ask a policeman where they might find a certain address. He remembers that it is a home at which there is a bizarre museum of curiousities, and then a thought strikes him. It is this thought which sparks an investigation into a most curious series of crimes by Campion and Scotland Yard. The reader already knows what's happened, whodunit, and is privy to witnessing the perpetrator at work during the course of a day. The suspense comes in trying to understand the mind of this criminal and in watching how events play out so that Scotland Yard can not only figure things out, but capture this guy as well. In truth, Campion does not play a very active role as he has in most of Allingham's previous series where he is usually the main character, but it is a chance question that he asks which sets the climax of the story into motion. I won't say any more, but if you were only going to read one Campion, this one might be it. Most excellent; highly recommended.Even if you don't follow the Campion series, you won't be lost reading this one, even though it's quite late in the series. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes a good suspense novel, and to readers of British mystery and mystery in general.
    • 4/5
      Another Albert Campion mystery that keeps the reader involved.This is an interesting story since we know who the murderer is right away. The question is whether Campion and his sidekick, Scotland Yard Superintendent Charles Luke, can solve the murders. The art of detection at its best.
    • 3/5
      A not-very-suspenseful suspense novel with very little Campion. The characterizations are good, but the plot is weak.
    • 4/5
      I don't believe this is really Allingham, but her husband, because the novel is plot-centric rather than Campion-centric. I enjoyed it, and the plot kept me intrigued, but I could have done with more Campion, because after all, what readers want is more of the characters we love most.
    • 4/5
      Top flight. Not a whodunit, but fascinating to watch the story unfold alongside the murderer's character. Campion's role is minimal as the story revolves around the murderer and the young man who, almost at random, takes an interest in him. My only complaint is that there's no explanation of how the precise, calculating villain decided to use his talents in crime rather than rising high in the banks, as I suspect anyone else with his background would do. But the pathos of the final scene is quite remarkable.
    • 4/5
      Charles Luke, now a new superintendent in Scotland Yard, is convinced a little London square called Garden Green is linked to a whole series of crimes. His superiors think he is crazy, but Campion takes the idea seriously. The reader knows it is true, because there are alternating sections from the criminal's point of view --something I intensely dislike, but forgive in this case for the setting -- a museum of bizarre Victorian curiosities --and the involvement of an attractive young couple.
    • 4/5
      Poor "little Albert", dragged in kicking (literally) and screaming (or at least complaining loudly) to assist the remarkable newly Superintendent Charlie Luke in the investigation of a number of killings. He only wanted to go on vacation – and shortly found himself left unsure whether he was more likely to be kidnapped by the bad guys or the good guys. The plot was handled nicely; since the reader pretty much knows the villain is the villain it's more a matter of suspense – is he going to hurt the old lady or the girl, or the girl's beau? How are Campion and co. going to find him? Not "whether", of course. And what exactly is he up to? Allingham's greatest gift was with rounded, real, believable characters, which is why her books are so enjoyable to go back to again. I liked this one a lot.
    • 5/5
      Well plotted and genuinely scary

      Thought Campion appears in this novel, it’s really about the mind of a murderer, and what happens as his plans unravel. A really fine suspense novella.