Mr. Campion's Farewell

DeadlyDiversions.com Celebrating the best in crime fiction From Out of the Past Mike Ripley breathes new life into an old favourite Suspended Sentences by Jim Napier eginning in 1920 and husband “Pip” Carter, and left continuing for half a unfinished at his own death. It B glorious century, British would have been Campion’s crime writers spawned an twenty-second outing, and Ripley impressive array of distinctive protagonists, including Agatha Christie’s flamboyant Hercule Poirot, her self-effacing amateur sleuth Miss Marple, and Dorothy Sayer’s gentleman investigator, Lord Peter Wimsey. But none was more effectively portrayed than Margery Allingham’s bespeckled, deceptively bland Albert Campion – who, like Wimsey, could trace his family roots to their aristocratic origins. Together with his gruff manservant (and ex-burglar) Magersfontein Lugg, Campion featured in eighteen novels by Allingham, and in a further three finished or written by her husband following her death in 1966. Now Severn House has released a found himself working only from new entry in the Campion canon. fragments, and entirely lacking a British novelist Mike Ripley has plot outline or character synopsis. been authorized to “finish”—the Not one to be easily daunted, word hardly does the task justice Ripley has drawn on his own forty- —the latest chronicle in the series, year love affair with Allingham’s Mr. Campion’s Farewell, a novel sleuth in fashioning a novel that begun by Margery Allingham’s DeadlyDiversions.com Celebrating the best in crime fiction features characters drawn from marooning him in the village. An other Campion novels, and is invitation to join some of the locals entirely worthy of a place in a shooting party seems an alongside Allingham’s own work. agreeable way to pass the time In the pastoral Suffolk village of while his car is being repaired, but Lindsay Carfax Albert Campion has things take an ominous turn when decided to visit his wife’s niece, Campion himself is hospitalized Eliza Jane Fitton, a talented but with birdshot received in what wayward artist who makes her used to be called the nether living by knocking out paintings regions, and tumbles down an for the local antiques dealer, who embankment, very nearly dying in may or may not pass them off as the process. something more valuable. Visiting her husband in his hospital The village is presided over by the room, Lady Amanda Fitton Carders, a small group of men who grudgingly provides him with a trace their origins to the four- new set of clothing, and warns him hundred-year-old guild system in to cease his investigations; but the region’s wool industry. They ignoring her ministrations and have attracted the interest of Lugg’s dire predictions he sets off Superintendent Charles Luke of for his old haunts at Cambridge to Scotland Yard. Noting that the consult an old mentor, determined Carders have their fingers in a lot to unravel the curious goings-on of local pies Luke suspects they are involving the mysterious Carders. up to no good, and he asks Before it is ended Campion’s Campion to look into them during journey will include a visit to Lady his visit. Not least among the Prunella Redcar (a distant relative village’s many quirks, an un- in the south of France), the common number of things seem to discovery of not one, but no less turn on the number nine. From than four secret passages in the sporting Nine Days’ Wonders and heart of the village, and an nine oaks by the village church, to appreciation for the lost art of nine steps to the Carders Hall and owling. a schoolteacher gone missing who Reprises of a popular series by turns up suddenly after nine day’s original authors are not always absence, resolutely refusing to successful, let alone those discuss where he’s been. attempted by others. Happily, this Shortly after Campion arrives and is not the case with author Mike begins poking around his Ripley’s informed work. From the cherished Jaguar is vandalised, requisite village map provided in DeadlyDiversions.com Celebrating the best in crime fiction the frontispiece to the sharp and with the chilling events of a small witty dialogue rendered perfectly rural village under the control of a for its time, and not forgetting a small group of mysterious men. cast of eccentric characters who Marking Campion’s first outing in wouldn’t look out of place in a over forty years it is great fun and a Dickens novel, all of which is welcome addition to the series, wrapped around an engaging and will, I understand, be followed puzzle mystery, Mr. Campion’s by yet another from the talented Farewell perfectly juxtaposes the pen of Mr. Ripley, Mr. Campion’s frivolous atmosphere of the day Fox. ______ Originally published on Reviewing the Evidence, October ___, 2014. Since 2005 Jim Napier's reviews and interviews have appeared in several Canadian newspapers and on such websites as Spinetingler, The Rap Sheet, Shots Magazine, Crime Time, Reviewing The Evidence, January magazine, the Montreal Review of Books, the Ottawa Review of Books, and Amazon.com, as well as on his own award-winning site, Deadly Diversions. He can be reached at [email protected] .

Load more