born May 20, 1904, London, Eng.
died June 30, 1966, Colchester, Essex
British detective-story writer.
She published her first story at age 8, her first novel at 19, and her first detective story in her early 20s. Her stories about the fictional detective Albert Campion became very popular, and such novels as Tiger in the Smoke (1952) and The China Governess (1962), with their intellectual style and psychological insight, helped win detective fiction consideration as a serious literary genre. The BBC produced adaptations of eight of her novels in the late 1980s.