May 20, 1904

Margery Allingham (May 20, 1904 to June 30, 1966) wrote detective stories, English detective stories, though the accent in her stories is more on crime and less on cozy. In one of her later books, More Work for the Undertaker (1949) we have this description:

Once I saw a cat kill a snake, .... The snake was in a little hollow in the ground, coiled, afraid to try to get away. The cat reached out a paw and the snake struck, but the cat was quicker and the paw was safe.

The rural setting invoked above was probably the real Tolleshunt d’Arcy, which is the English village where Allingham's large old house was located. She shared it with Pip Youngman Carter, her husband, whom she supported. Some called him feckless, but that was before he become editor of The Tatler in the 1950s. Her friend Dorothy Sayers lived not too far away. A cozy life indeed.