Welcome Introduction & Biography Title Listings Mysteries & Detective Stories Romances & Adventures Blackkerchief Dick Dance of the Years The Darings of the Red Rose Autobiographical Writing as 'Maxwell March' Notes on the Title List Reviews of Novels 'Campion' (BBC TV) Bibliography & Links the Margery Allingham Society Credits, Thanks & Mail

The Darings of the Red Rose (Crippen & Landru, 1995) In one of the introductions that she provided for the 'Campion' series in the United States, Dame Diana Rigg, with an amused chuckle that always reminded me of Emma Peel, noted the reference to one of Margery Allingham's earliest known works, 'The Society Millgirl and the Seven Wicked Millionaires.' Dame Diana quickly summed up: "The mind boggles." However, thanks to Julia Thorogood's biography of Allingham, those stories, first mentioned by Philip Youngman Carter in his semi-autobiographical work All I Did Was This, were positively identified, and published with an introduction by Allingham scholar Barry Pike in 1995, under the collective title of The Darings of the Red Rose. Originally serialised in Weekly Welcome magazine, the tales do not fall too far from Youngman Carter's description. Betty Connolly lives the life of a debutante, but has a dark secret: she seeks revenge upon the eight opportunistic financiers who were responsible for the destruction of her Lancashire village. In the guise of the Red Rose, Betty takes her revenge on each of the financiers in turn, completely baffling her Scotland Yard suitor, Tommy Kempis, along the way. From the Crippen & Landru web site: "The lights are dim and a silent figure, in a diaphanous white gown, sneaks toward the safe where the famous diamond, The Seven Stars, is kept. Softly the safe door opens, the diamond is removed, and the figure slips away, leaving only a red rosebud behind. Betty Connolly appears to be a Bright Young Thing interested only in the debutante world of 1930s London, but she has a secret life. In the guise of the mysterious crook, The Red Rose, she strikes fear into the cold hearts of eight financiers who ruined her Lancashire town. The book contains eight newly discovered stories by the creator of the classic sleuth Albert Campion."  BOOKS     This book has been out of print for several years now, and I only just recently acquired it for myself. Crippen & Landru do have a space for out-of-print titles on their web site, but I haven't seen anything turn up there yet. Do please check, though. It never hurts to look. It appears that there are copies to be had - I've seen a total of three ranging in price between US$69 and US$115, and I can only assume that the sellers are completely mad. Still, it's there to be had - if you have the money to spend.