The White Cottage Mystery

by Margery Allingham

'One of Allingham's very best' Observer

Eric Crowther collected secrets and used them as weapons. Delighting in nothing more than torturing those around him with what he knew, there is no shortage of suspects when he is found dead in the White Cottage. Chief Inspector Challenor and his son Jerry will have to look deep into everyone's past – including the victim's – before they can be sure who has pulled the trigger. The fact that Jerry is in love with one of the suspects, however, might complicate things.

The White Cottage Mystery was Margery Allingham’s first detective story, originally written as a serial for the Daily Express in 1927 and published as a book a year later.

• ISBN10: 1408880202
• ISBN13: 9781408880203
• Publish Date: 2 June 2016 (first published 3 April 1975)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 8 September 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 176
• Language: English

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

My first Allingham, and fittingly, her first too.  Definitely not my last.     DCI Challenor's son is on his way home to London one evening when he sees a young woman stepping off the bus with a heavy load and stops to offer her a ride to her home.  Moments after leaving her there, he and the local constable hear the rapport of a shotgun and on returning find a man most definitely dead and a hallway full of suspects.   This is a very short read, relative to today's average mystery, coming in at just 157 pages.  But it's a fast-paced 157 pages and Allingham dispenses with anything monotonous or that might smack of filler.  The timeline jumps from one paragraph to another; sometimes by just a few hours, sometimes a few days, towards the end, a few years.  This might really aggravate some readers but if you're familiar with Golden Age mysteries, you won't find it unusual.   I thoroughly enjoyed it; so much so that it was 1am when I finally shut the light off, having finished the entire book in one sitting.  She had me guessing the entire way through, and not once did I come close.  I found DCI Challenor's advice at the end appalling; it would never fly in our time, but in the age it was written, it would have been standard.   A very good mystery and from my first peek, I'd say Allingham is under valued as a master of mystery, but to be sure, I'll have to read a few more - as soon as possible.