"Mystery Mile" is a distinctly interesting detective story, thoroughly modern in mood, and yet suggestive in its construction of the early Conan Doyles. Margery Allingham … has an alert, inventive mind that transforms the incongruous, the artificial, and the somewhat hackneyed elements of mystery writing into quite vivid and startling effects. The Holmes-Moriarity motive predominates, with a generous sprinkling of rescue of girl about to be tortured by the arch-criminals, duel between detective and master mind isolated in wilderness, and the final swallowing up of Sinister in the quicksands of a swamp. It is grand stuff, entertainingly written, and although you are never invited to do much detecting of your own, you are legitimately held in nervous anticipation of the final dénouement.

A word about the detective who is amusingly overdrawn as a babbling dilettante who always comes through at the right moment. He is a clever creation...