After a battle with breast cancer, Margery died in 1966. Her husband finished her last novel, A Cargo of Eagles at her request, and published it in 1968.

Sanchez-Arriaga J, Sanmartin JR, Lorenzini EC (2017) Comparison of technologies for deorbiting spacecraft from low-earth-orbit at end of mission. Acta Astronaut 138:536–542 Very different from the classic whodunit one expects from the golden age of crime as exemplified by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. There is no genius personality to solve the mystery, just solid detective work; no neatly assembled character list confined to set locations, just people introduced in dribs and drab across the sprawling city of London; we know the murderer right from the outset, the question is whether he will be caught.

I appreciate the many clever ways golden-age mystery writers find to tell their whodunits outside of the traditonal, but this book - which has a THRILLING run up to the conclusion - is ultimately disappointing.

This book was the 16th outing for one of Alligham’s most famous characters, Albert Campion who allegedly was designed as a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. Again, this was the first of his stories I’ve ever read, and although he popped up constantly throughout the story, he didn’t seem to add anything to what was happening and his presence could easily have been missed. I guess you need to have perhaps read more about him previously to have appreciated his contribution.

Comparing to local averages

Grassi G, Gloder A, Pellegrina L, Pezzato M, Rossi A, Branz F, Duzzi M, Mantellato R, Olivieri L, Sansone F, Lorenzini EC, Francesconi A (2017) An innovative space tether deployer with retrieval capability: design and test of STAR experiment. In: Proceedings of the 68th IAC, Adelaide, Australia Vaughn J, Curtis L, Gilchrist B, Bilen S, Lorenzini E (2004) Review of the proSEDS electrodynamic tether mission development. In: 40th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE joint propulsion conference and exhibit, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA, p 3501