Mr. Campion's Farewell - Hardcover

Ripley, Mike

3.85

350 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0727883836 ISBN 13: 9780727883834

Publisher: Severn House, 2014

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The Golden Age of British Detective Fiction

The idyllic English village of Lindsay Carfax isn’t run by the parish council, the rating authority, the sanitary inspector nor the local cops as you might suppose. The real bosses are the Carders – something to do with wool, four hundred years back. They wound stuff on cards, I suppose. But these boys are very fly customers – they’re right on the ball. Boiled down, it comes to this; they’re a syndicate who run this place – which makes a packet – with their own rules. One way and another they probably own most of it.”

Thus ruminated Superintendent Charles Luke to Albert Campion who was contemplating visiting his wayward artistic niece in Carfax. And when a missing schoolteacher reappeared after nine days, and Campion’s car was “inadvertently” damaged, not to mention Campion himself, then all the signs were that not all was what it seemed.

Campion himself plays the central role in this quintessentially British mystery, but there are appearances too from all of Margery Allingham’s regular characters, from Luke to Campion’s former manservant Lugg, to his wife Lady Amanda Fitton and others. The dialogue is sharp and witty, the observation keen, and the climax is thrilling and eerily atmospheric.

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Book Description:

The Golden Age of British Detective Fiction

From the Author:

With the co-operation of the Margery Allingham Society, I have completed the untitled third novel by Pip Youngman Carter, Margery’s widower, left unfinished on his death in 1969. On Margery’s death in 1966, Youngman Carter completed her novel Cargo of Eagles (published 1968) and two further Campion books: Mr Campion’s Farthing and Mr Campion’s Falcon. He was at work on a third, which would have been the twenty-second Campion novel, when he died in November 1969.

Pip’s fragment of manuscript, which contained revisions and minor corrections but no plot outline, character synopsis or plan, was bequeathed to Margery Allingham’s sister Joyce; and upon her death in 2001, the manuscript was left to officials of the Margery Allingham Society (MAS). In 2010, as a guest speaker at the Society’s annual convention, I first learned of Youngman Carter’s unfinished novel, despite being an avid Allingham fan for more than forty years and having lived within ten miles of Pip and Margery’s home in Tolleshunt d’Arcy in Essex for more than twenty.

In 2012 Barry Pike, Chairman of the Margery Allingham Society, took up my rash offer to complete Pip’s manuscript as an affectionate conclusion to the adventures of Albert Campion, one of the brightest stars in the rich firmament of British crime writing. But Severn House is so enthusiastic that they have commissioned a further title Mr Campion’s Fox for 2015. I must also thank Julia Jones, Margery Allingham’s biographer, and novelist Andrew Taylor for their encouragement after reading early drafts.

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