Mr Campion's War

Starred review from April 13, 2015
Having successfully completed an unfinished manuscript by Margery Allingham’s husband (2014’s Mr. Campion’s Farewell), Ripley presents a fully original story, set in the 1960s, which paves the way for further focus on Rupert, the engaging grown son of Allingham’s series sleuth, Albert Campion. At a diplomatic reception in London, Albert is approached by Aage Westergaard, the Danish ambassador, who’s concerned about the well-being of his 18-year-old daughter, Vibeke, who’s been working as an au pair in the Suffolk town of Gapton. Westergaard is uneasy about her boyfriend, Frank Tate, and asks Albert to keep an eye on him, surveillance that Albert delegates to Rupert. Rupert observes little that’s unusual, apart from Tate’s habit of dashing into pubs for just a minute or two. The favor becomes more complicated when Vibeke disappears and a corpse turns up in Gapton with the back of its head smashed in. Ripley maintains a light touch in the service of an intricate mystery that will please Allingham devotees and newcomers alike.

Starred review from October 15, 2018
It's Albert Campion's seventieth birthday, and he's planned a big celebration at London's posh Dorchester Hotel. The guest list is eclectic: his family, of course, but also guests from France and Spain, a former German officer, a London police inspector, and representatives from the armed services and MI6. Campion's plan is to finally tell his family and friends what he did in WWII?something so clandestine that the Official Secrets Act prevented him from revealing it until now, nearly 30 years later. In a series of flashbacks, Campion shows that he was, in fact, a war hero in Vichy France and a very different person from the gentle, eccentric, seemingly bumbling man he now often seems to be. But all these years later, there is one unresolved issue that could result in Campion's birthday celebration ending in tragedy. Can he find a way to avert a fiasco? Ripley has more than capably taken over the Albert Campion mystery series, originally created by Margery Allingham during the Golden Age of British crime fiction, and has continued to publish the same kind of wonderfully genteel, appealingly old-fashioned, gently humorous, always entertaining, and eminently readable stories that became Allingham's signature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)