ABSTRACT
The detective story, like the sonnet, all too often falls into a set and procrustean pattern which leaves the author of such works at the mercy of the form and with little opportunity for development of any original theme or character. Agatha Christie has said more than once in public statements, that she grew weary very early in his career of the “little grey cells” of M. Poirot, her sterling and indefatigable detective hero. Margery Allingham, too, despite the fact that she embellished the character of her detective hero with an assortment of both philosophical and psychological trimmings, lost much of her enthusiasm for Albert Campion and allowed him to become little more than a robot figure through whose hollow voice she permitted traditional mechanics of detective work to be enunciated. There is one lady Pygmalion, however, who so fell in love with the product of her imagination that she was able to continue the development of his character to a point of perfection unheard of in the annals of mystery writing.
