Reading List

Authors Like Margery Allingham

Margery Allingham earned her first writing fee at the age of eight and published her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, in 1923, when she was nineteen. Both her parents wrote for a living: her father, Herbert, edited and wrote pulp fiction, and her mother wrote for women’s magazines. In 1927 she married Philip Youngman Carter, who helped plot her interwar stories and designed many of her jackets. Albert Campion arrived as a supporting character in The Crime at Black Dudley (1929): a man from an aristocratic family living under an assumed name, with a former burglar, Magersfontein Lugg, as his manservant. By The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) he was hunting a killer through a London pea-soup fog. She died in 1966, aged 62, and is buried at Tolleshunt D’Arcy in Essex. The ten writers below share her mix of a puzzle, a joke and a real fear of what people will do for money.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Golden Age detection · Albert Campion · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Margery Allingham, start with Dorothy L. Sayers, whose Lord Peter Wimsey Campion was supposedly created to parody, and Ngaio Marsh, the fellow Queen of Crime from New Zealand. For more Campion, read Mike Ripley, who has continued the series since 2014. Below are seven more, from the 1868 novel T. S. Eliot called the first modern English detective novel to a Japanese detective of 1946.

10 authors like Margery Allingham

01
Where it began

Wilkie Collins

British · The Woman in White (1860), The Moonstone (1868)

The Moonstone was serialised in Charles Dickens’s magazine All the Year Round in 1868. An Indian diamond left to Rachel Verinder vanishes from her bedroom in a Yorkshire country house on her eighteenth birthday, and the story is told through several witnesses’ accounts, with Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard called in. T. S. Eliot called it “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels”.

Collins set the pattern Allingham inherited: a country house, a stolen treasure, a household of suspects and a professional detective beside the amateurs. Suits readers who want to see where the form came from.

— Lisanne
02
The first modern mystery

E. C. Bentley

English · Trent’s Last Case (1913)

Bentley (1875–1956) was a school friend of G. K. Chesterton, who dedicated The Man Who Was Thursday to him, and he popularised the clerihew with Biography for Beginners (1905). Trent’s Last Case is often called the first truly modern mystery. He was president of the Detection Club from 1936 to 1949.

Bentley made the gentleman amateur light-hearted and fallible, the type Campion grew out of. Suits readers who want one of the books Allingham’s generation started from.

— Lisanne
03
The detective Campion mocked

Dorothy L. Sayers

British · Strong Poison (1930), Murder Must Advertise (1933), Gaudy Night (1935)

Sayers (1893–1957) was born in Oxford, worked as an advertising copywriter at S. H. Benson in the 1920s and was a founder member of the Detection Club in 1930. Her detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, meets the novelist Harriet Vane in Strong Poison and courts her for several books. Critics have documented antisemitic stereotypes in early novels such as Whose Body?.

Campion was supposedly created as a parody of Wimsey, and both men began as comic young men about town and deepened over their series, with a clever woman to match: Harriet Vane for Wimsey, Amanda Fitton for Campion. Suits readers who followed Campion and Amanda.

— Lisanne

Every book by Dorothy L. Sayers →

04
A fellow Queen of Crime

Ngaio Marsh

New Zealander · A Man Lay Dead (1934), Artists in Crime (1938), Surfeit of Lampreys (1941)

Marsh (1895–1982) was born in Christchurch, worked as an actress and painter, and wrote 32 detective novels about Chief Inspector Roderick Alleyn of Scotland Yard, four of them set in New Zealand. With Allingham, Sayers and Agatha Christie she is counted among the four Queens of Crime of the Golden Age.

Marsh and Allingham both put eccentric, charming families under police scrutiny, and both kept a series detective going for more than three decades. Suits readers who like Campion among artists and actors.

— Lisanne

Every book by Ngaio Marsh →

05
Suspense over puzzle

Josephine Tey

Scottish · The Franchise Affair (1948), Brat Farrar (1949), The Daughter of Time (1951)

Tey was a pen name of Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896–1952) of Inverness. As Gordon Daviot she wrote Richard of Bordeaux, which ran for a year in the West End from 1932 with John Gielgud. In 1990 the Crime Writers’ Association named The Daughter of Time the greatest crime novel of all time.

Tey, like the postwar Allingham, moved from the puzzle towards suspense and character. Brat Farrar, about a young man who claims to be a missing heir, shares The Tiger in the Smoke’s interest in a man who may have come back from the dead.

— Lisanne
06
The comic heir

Edmund Crispin

English · The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944), The Moving Toyshop (1946), Swan Song (1947)

Edmund Crispin was the pen name of Robert Bruce Montgomery (1921–1978), who as Bruce Montgomery composed the scores for six early Carry On films and the original Carry On theme. His detective, Gervase Fen, is an eccentric Oxford professor of English.

Crispin writes the comic side of early Campion: chases, eccentrics and jokes about detective fiction itself. Suits readers who like Mystery Mile and Sweet Danger more than the later, darker books.

— Lisanne
07
The Golden Age in Japan

Seishi Yokomizo

Japanese · The Honjin Murders (1946; English 2019), The Inugami Curse (1950–51; English 2003)

Yokomizo (1902–1981) was born in Kobe and is best known for his private detective Kosuke Kindaichi. He admired John Dickson Carr and was often called the Japanese John Dickson Carr; his postwar novels follow the orthodox Western detective story. Pushkin Vertigo published Louise Heal Kawai’s translation of The Honjin Murders in 2019.

Yokomizo took the Golden Age form Allingham worked in to postwar Japan, with old families, inheritance and a closed circle of suspects. Suits readers who want the classic puzzle somewhere new.

— Lisanne
08
After the Golden Age

P. D. James

English · Cover Her Face (1962), A Taste for Death (1986), The Children of Men (1992)

James (1920–2014) was born in Oxford, worked for a London hospital board and then as a Home Office civil servant until 1979, and was made a life peer in 1991. Her detective, Adam Dalgliesh, is a Scotland Yard commander who writes poetry. In 2009 she published Talking About Detective Fiction, a short history of the genre.

James complicates Allingham. She kept the closed circle of suspects but filled it with institutions, procedure and the lasting damage of a killing. Read her to see what changed after Allingham’s generation.

— Lisanne

Every book by P. D. James →

09
The puzzle as a game

Anthony Horowitz

English · Magpie Murders (2016), The Word Is Murder (2017), Marble Hall Murders (2025)

Horowitz was born in Stanmore, Middlesex, in 1955. He created Foyle’s War for ITV, wrote many early episodes of Midsomer Murders and is the author of the Alex Rider books. Magpie Murders is a whodunit about a writer murdered while writing his latest whodunit; Marble Hall Murders (2025) is the last of its Atticus Pünd series.

Horowitz writes the Golden Age mystery knowing it is a game, as Allingham did in her early Campions, and enjoys the conventions as much as the solution. Suits readers who want the puzzle and the joke at once.

— Lisanne

Every book by Anthony Horowitz →

10
He continues Campion

Mike Ripley

British · Just Another Angel (1988), Mr Campion’s Farewell (2014), Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (2017)

Ripley was born in Huddersfield in 1952 and was The Daily Telegraph’s crime fiction critic for ten years. With the Margery Allingham Society he completed Philip Youngman Carter’s unfinished Campion manuscript as Mr Campion’s Farewell (2014) and has written more Campion novels since; Mr Campion’s Christmas (2024) won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Last Laugh Award. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is his history of the British thriller boom.

No one is closer to the originals: Ripley picked up Campion from the notes of Allingham’s widower and has kept him going for more than a decade. Suits readers who have run out of Allingham.

— Lisanne

Where to start if you loved Margery Allingham

If you want more Campion, read Mike Ripley.

Mr Campion’s Farewell (2014): completed from Philip Youngman Carter’s unfinished manuscript.

If you want the detective Campion was built to mock, read Dorothy L. Sayers.

Strong Poison (1930): Lord Peter Wimsey meets Harriet Vane, on trial for murder.

If you love the comic early Campion, read Edmund Crispin.

The Moving Toyshop (1946): an Oxford professor, a vanished shop and a corpse.

If you prefer the darker postwar books, read P. D. James.

Cover Her Face (1962): the first Adam Dalgliesh case.

If you want more Margery Allingham, go back to the start.

Read The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), then Police at the Funeral (1931), Death of a Ghost (1934), Traitor’s Purse (1941) and The Tiger in the Smoke (1952).

Frequently asked questions about authors like Margery Allingham

Who writes like Margery Allingham?

Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey from her own generation; Edmund Crispin for comedy; Anthony Horowitz and Mike Ripley among living writers.

Is Margery Allingham like Agatha Christie?

Both are counted among the four Queens of Crime of the Golden Age, with Sayers and Marsh. Allingham’s Campion novels move between puzzle, comedy and thriller.

Which Margery Allingham book should I read first?

The Tiger in the Smoke (1952), which critics have called her best, or The Crime at Black Dudley (1929), in which Campion first appears.

Does Margery Allingham have a new book?

No. She died in 1966. Mike Ripley has continued the Campion series since Mr Campion’s Farewell (2014), and his Mr Campion’s Christmas (2024) won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Last Laugh Award.

Who is Albert Campion?

Allingham’s detective: a man from an aristocratic family living under an assumed name, helped by his manservant Magersfontein Lugg, a former burglar. He later marries Amanda Fitton, who first appears in Sweet Danger (1933).

Was Campion adapted for television?

Yes. The BBC series Campion (1989–90) starred Peter Davison as Campion and Brian Glover as Lugg.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

More from the shelf

Reading list

Books by Female Authors

Women writers worth your time.

Reading list

Classic Books to Read

Where to start with the classics, honestly rated.

Reading list

Best-Selling Book Series

Long series and where to start each one.

Reading list

Authors Who Used Pseudonyms

Josephine Tey, Edmund Crispin and other second names.

From the bookshelf

If this shelf interested you, the full bookshelf has more: reading lists by theme, author guides, and notes on what is actually worth your time.

Browse the full bookshelf Get book recommendations

Read next

Every book by Margery Allingham, in order →

Reading lists to try next
Reading listThe Best British AuthorsWhere to start with British writing.Reading listBooks About Family SecretsWhat households keep quiet.Reading listBooks on LyingHow and why people deceive.Reading listThe Best Fiction of All TimeThe novels worth your time.
Start Typing
Dummy Image

Hi, there.

Home

About

My Bookshelf

Weekly’s

Stay tuned: sign up for the newsletter!