5 November 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-4483-1471-3 (HB)
It is 27th December 1962, and an unwilling driver, Graham Fisk, is counting his passengers as they board his coach at Victoria coach station. As he does so, Fisk takes stock of his passengers and thinks how he’d prefer to stay in London and take his family to the Christmas pantomime. However, his bosses insist that the tickets have been purchased and Fisk is the person scheduled to transport the passengers to rural Norfolk, despite the winter chill and the adverse weather forecast. The coach is far from full, with just seven passengers. Four of them seem to Fisk to be probable travellers to the religious site of Walsingham, a popular destination for pilgrims. They include a vicar; a middle-aged, plainly dressed woman; an annoying man who will not stop talking and is determined to show off all he knows; and a strange man who continually clutches a worn leather briefcase, which he refuses to let go of. The three other passengers are young American servicemen and Fisk wonders if they are stationed at one of the American military bases situated in Norfolk. As the coach continues on its journey, the weather deteriorates still further, and the exhausted driver allows one of the Americans to take over the driving. They skid and crash into an immense stone that marks the entrance to the drive of a country house, which brings their journey to a premature end.
Albert and Amanda Campion have enjoyed a quiet Christmas at their country house, Carteret. Their only excitement was the danger of Campion’s long-time henchman, Lugg, bursting out of his red suit while playing Father Christmas for the children of the staff at the company where Amanda is a senior engineer; and their only visitors had been Amanda’s sister, Mary, and her husband, Guffy Randall, one of Campion’s dearest friends. However, Lugg did his father Christmas duties without disaster and Mary, Guffy and their young son have now left. The house contains only Albert, Amanda, their student son, Rupert, and Lugg, although they are planning to have a large firework party to celebrate the New Year. When the weather becomes threatening, the Campions persuade their housekeeper to stay at the house and go to collect her ancient, and very deaf, father-in-law from their cottage, to ensure his safety. This is the status when the coach crashes into one of the ancient stones outside Carterets and the Campions take in the stranded driver and passengers.
Although the unexpected visitors are an eccentric and mixed group, the family tries to make them welcome. The ever-inventive Mr Campion suggests a private game between Amanda, Rupert, Lugg and himself in which they all talk to one or two of the newcomers and draw out their stories, the person who unearths the most interesting story wins the competition. As they probe their visitors’ backstories and reasons for making the journey, they discover that all of the passengers have different motives, and many have secrets. However, even Mr Campion cannot foresee the events that begin to unfold, which results in the murder of an innocent person. The threat grows and engulfs Campion, his home and his family and friends. With the telephone lines down, they are cut off from getting help by the appalling weather, Mr Campion and his team have to fight for their survival against a cruel and ruthless enemy.
Mr Campion’s Christmas is the twelfth book written by Mike Ripley in the Albert
Campion series, and feature the core characters created by the late, great
Margery Allingham. It is a lively, cleverly plotted story that brings Campion
and his colleagues into the political world of the early 1960s. Campion and
Lugg are older and a bit slower, but they are still a formidable team. Campion
is wiser and more experienced but recognisable as the flippant young adventurer
that Margery Allingham first introduced to the world in 1929. Mr Campion’s
Christmas is an excellent read which I highly recommend.
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Reviewer: Carol Westron
Professionally, he read history at university, trained as a journalist and went into public relations, working for the Brewers Society in London, promoting British beer and pubs, for 21 years. As part of his obligatory mid-life crisis, he gave up life in the big city and retrained as an archaeologist, working mostly on Romano-British sites in East Anglia.
At the age of 50 he had a stroke. He survived, recovered, wrote a book about it and served on the government's Stroke Strategy Committee which reported in 2009. He has produced festival performances with crime writers Colin Dexter and Minette Walters, as well as devising a Creative Crime Writing course for Cambridge University and the comedy panel game "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Cluedo" which was performed as the finale to the 2016 CrimeFest convention in Bristol. He completed the third Albert Campion novel left unfinished on the death of Pip Youngman Carter (husband of Margery Allingham) in 1969. Since then he has written eleven further novels.
He has also edited
"Tales on the Off-Beat" - a collection of short stories by Youngman
Carter and two volumes of "Callan Uncovered" by James Mitchell,
creator of the legendary television series starring Edward Woodward.
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