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Continuing the Story: Mike Ripley and Albert Campion
165 Plays9 months ago
In this episode, Brook and Sarah are joined by Mike Ripley, who has authored an additional 12 novels featuring Margery Allingham's sleuth Albert Campion. Mike shares his experiences continuing another author's work.
Discussed
Mr. Campion's Farewell (2014) Mike Ripley after P. Youngman Carter
Cargo of Eagles (1968) Margery Allingham with P. Youngman Carter
Mr. Campion's Farthing (1969) Youngman Carter
Mr. Campion's Falcon (1970) Youngman Carter
Sweet Danger (1933) Margery Allingham
Tiger in the Smoke (1952) Margery Allingham
Tiger in the Smoke (1956) directed by Roy Baker
Campion (1989-1990) BBC
Mystery Mile (1930) Margery Allingham
Angel series (1988-2015) Mike Ripley
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About Mike Ripley
Transcript
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Transcript
Introduction to Mike Ripley
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to Clued In Mystery. I'm Sarah. And I'm Brooke. And we both love mystery. Hi, Brooke. Hi, Sarah. How are you doing today? I'm doing really well. What about you? I'm great. And I can't believe we have such a treat. We have an amazing interview today.
From Fan to Author: Ripley's Journey
00:00:29
Speaker
So I'm going to introduce through his bio Mike Ripley.
00:00:33
Speaker
Mike Ripley was born a long time ago in a galaxy far away, Yorkshire. He read economic history at university and then trained as a journalist before moving into public relations, becoming director of press and PR for the Brewer Society, promoting British beers and pubs. The obligatory midlife crisis led to him becoming an archeologist, mostly on Roman and Anglo-Saxon sites.
00:01:00
Speaker
A published author of crime fiction since 1988, he has twice won the Crime Writers Last Lap Award, a Sherlock Award, the Angel Award for Fiction, and the HRF Keating Award for Fiction for his history of British thrillers.
00:01:17
Speaker
As a critic for more than 30 years, he has reviewed over 2000 mysteries for various newspapers, written for radio, and was a scriptwriter on the BBC show, Lovejoy. Welcome,
Challenges of Writing for Albert Campion
00:01:30
Speaker
Mike. This is just such a pleasure to have you on the show.
00:01:33
Speaker
delighted to be here. So one of the reasons we invited you is because you have been continuing some of the work that Marjorie Ellingham did with her sleuth, Albert Campion. And in past episodes, we have discussed when one author continues another author's work. Can you share a little bit about how you came to write Mr. Campion's farewell?
00:01:55
Speaker
Well, the first thing to say is I was a fan long before I started writing them. And I think I first discovered Marjolein in the mid 1960s. Actually, around about the time she died. And so I never got to meet her. But the books made a real impression on me, because unlike other golden age mysteries, as we say,
00:02:22
Speaker
the famous detectives, like Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey and so on. Her hero, Albert Cambian, had two great qualities, I thought. One, he was quite funny, and two, he didn't age. Now, Hercule Poirot didn't age because he was timeless.
00:02:43
Speaker
He was retired when he started in 1920 and he was about 127 when he finished his career. But it didn't matter because the books are, as Agatha Christie wrote them, absolutely timeless classics. Lord Peter Whimsey got to a certain age when that terrible thing called marriage happens and was more or less retired that way. When Albert Campion got married and continued over a long period of 30 odd years,
Crafting Mr. Campion's Farewell
00:03:13
Speaker
having adventures. And, brilliantly, he aged. He got older. If you look at the books written in the late fifties and early sixties, there are some terrific writings and terrific descriptions of him having a fight scene.
00:03:31
Speaker
which all heroes are supposed to have, but he's noticeably older and he's thinking all the time, God, I'm far too old for this. I can't do this anymore. I can't shoot guns. I can't run away and so on. And that intrigued me that he was so human in that way.
00:03:50
Speaker
So I was a great fan and purely by chance I ended up living only about 10 miles from Marge Allingham's home. And indeed my neighbour in the village I live in is the niece of the last housekeeper of Marge Allingham. So we're all quite home. A bit like the Salem witch trials around here.
00:04:13
Speaker
I'm not kidding about that. And so there are lots of little connections. Plus, my first job in this region after I left university was actually I worked at Essex University, which now houses the Marjoriamingham archive. So a lot of stars combined, if you like to think of it that way. But basically, I was a fan to begin with. Well, I've written a few novels, comic novels,
Incorporating Historical Context
00:04:41
Speaker
and a couple of historical ones.
00:04:43
Speaker
And because of my various connections with Allingham Country, as it were, I was asked to speak at a Marjory Allingham Convention. It was a small society called Marjory Allingham Society. And it was holding its convention in a hotel just down the road. So I thought, why not? So I went and told the story about how I discovered archery books and how I liked them. And everybody was very polite and applauded and so on.
00:05:13
Speaker
And when we broke for lunch, one of the members of the Society said quite casually that there was a third Campion book started by her husband. Now, when Marjorie died, her husband, who was called the young man Carter, completed the book she'd been writing, which was called Cargo of Eagles, and then wrote two more. And then called Mr. Campion's Farthing and Mr. Campion's Falcon.
00:05:40
Speaker
He then started, which I'd read when I knew her. But I didn't know he'd started a third, then he died. And the society had been left in the will of Marjorie's sister, the manuscript. So it was theirs to do with what they wanted. And they'd had it for 20 years. And one or two people had looked at it. They'd asked a couple of crime writers whether they considered trying to finish it.
00:06:07
Speaker
and nobody had seen too keen and it must have been a very good lunch because I was quite keen to volunteer. Then I was told that there was no synopsis,
Continuing the Campion Legacy
00:06:19
Speaker
there was no plot structure, there was nothing, just three and a half chapters of first draft manuscript.
00:06:29
Speaker
And I thought, well, I like a challenge. So I took a look at it and then said, yeah, I can I can do this. I can finish it because it was that was the advantage me, because I'm living around here. I recognize most of the places that young Carter was talking about and a very important clue in the names he gave to one of the places. And so I made up a plot and thought, well, as he'd started it in 1969,
00:07:00
Speaker
and was writing it as if it was contemporary. A, you'd have Campion was now 69 years old, because he's as old as the century. And so we have an elderly man maybe coming up to retirement, or at least thinking of retiring from this detective business. Not as quick as he was, not sharp as he was maybe, and he's coming up against crimes that were predominant in the 60s.
00:07:28
Speaker
So we're talking about drug smuggling, perhaps, and naughty substances. And so I put together the book that way, and that was him reacting. And we called it Mr. Campion's farewell, because it was a farewell to detecting, rather than anything else. And unfortunately, the publishers liked it and said, can you do another one?
00:07:56
Speaker
I've just delivered number 12. And for a man who's in his 60s going on 70s, an awful lot of adventures have been packed in between 1969 and 1972, that's all I'm saying. So eventually he will get acquired retirement, I hope, because he certainly deserves a
Adapting Humor for Modern Readers
00:08:16
Speaker
lot.
00:08:16
Speaker
Well, I've read a couple of the books that you've written and his son features in the two that I've written. I don't know if that's true of the other ones. So are you kind of setting the stage for his son to perhaps take over some responsibilities? Well, no, I'm not because Marjorie Allingham didn't.
00:08:39
Speaker
The son, Rupert, is mentioned in a couple of Allingham books. I mean, one when he's born and one when he's a young boy. But actually, she herself didn't really seem to see the idea of a family takeover. The news she came, as she mentioned in 1958, in an essay she wrote, which was called What to Do with an Aging Detective,
00:09:08
Speaker
And she suggested that perhaps not, she didn't mention Rupert at all, but she did put out the taste, the sort of suggestion that her nephew, who's called Christopher, might be a suitable candidate to take on the business. Now, Christopher is very rarely referred to in the bulk of the books, but one of the great characters
00:09:36
Speaker
that she invented, who is the manservant called Lugg. And Lugg's opinion of Christopher is just that, oh, he was the son of your brother who got dropped on his head while I eat him. And that's all you get to know about it. And so when I've, in the last published book,
00:09:57
Speaker
I've actually given Christopher a decent role as much as you can for somebody who's the son of somebody who got dropped on the head at even. And he's in public relations, of course.
00:10:13
Speaker
he gets his clients into more scrapes than he gets them out of. But he has to go to Albert for help. And that's my sort of little homage. I kept Rupert in and even give Rupert a wife. But there was no indication that he would take on the family business. And I don't think I
00:10:34
Speaker
I could do it because the family is Albert Campion, Log, the
Research and Authenticity
00:10:39
Speaker
man servant, and Lady Amanda. Those three are the core. I think anything else would be war through you down somewhat. It's not up to me. Maybe somebody else, but not me. Well, Mike, you explained a little bit about how you were a fan before starting to write. How was researching these books different from writing your other novels?
00:11:03
Speaker
Well, for the series I'm best known for, which is the Angel series of comedy crimes, no research was required at all. And somebody once said, where do you come up with your ideas? I said, I just hang around in pubs because at the time that was my job. And it was simply once I'd formulated the character, it was just a question of
00:11:27
Speaker
look at the newspaper and say, aha, fox hunting, that's an issue. What would Angel do? And away you went. And they have a lot of jokes lined up. And once you've told them all on posted notes, and as you tell them, you take them down. And when you've got no jokes left, don't you think, I better make, you know, a lot of shots rang out and they all fell dead. And so they were quite easy and fun to run. The difference with the campaign ones is the research
00:11:57
Speaker
was partly because they're all set in the late 60s and 70s. Now, I do have a rule, especially when I was reviewing books, that, I mean, you have the expression historical mysteries, right? Yes. Right. Well, any book that's set in a period when I was alive, aimed history as far as I'm concerned.
00:12:24
Speaker
So it was just a question of not remembering a lot. And of course, you have the marvelous canon of 20-odd marginal books, novels, not to mention loads of short stories to fall back on. So I sort of knew the period I was working in. Now, when I've done, as I have on a few occasions, I've done flashbacks to the 1930s or to the Second World War,
00:12:53
Speaker
Then I have had to do some serious research, but that's part of the job. And that's actually the fun part of the job often, just actually having to write the damn thing is really boring. But it's digging up what you can. I mean, one little example. I was curious lady Amanda Campion's wife is an aeronautical engineer. Now,
00:13:22
Speaker
when she becomes an aeronautical engineer
Restoring Humor in the Series
00:13:24
Speaker
in the 1930s, it seems from the books that she just does it. She doesn't go to university. She's not trained in anything. She likes tinkering with engines and she has a flatbed. It's sort of glossed over. And you think, and in fact, I've had a character say this in one of the books, that is a really strange occupation for a lady, isn't it?
00:13:50
Speaker
which isn't now, but was then, until I was doing some research into aircraft designs, and I discovered that there's an amazing woman called Blossom Miles, whose career is exactly what Lady Reynolds was, apart from the fact that she wasn't married to a detective.
00:14:12
Speaker
And obviously Bartramingham knew of this woman, she was quite famous in her day, but she was a pilot, she went on to design aircraft and actually designed aircraft during the war. And they had their own company with her husband. So there was a possibility, that sort of research I found was fascinating. It's crazy. And it didn't mean anything much in the book, except it gave me the confidence
00:14:39
Speaker
to say, well, yes, she's an engine, because by the time you get to the 60s when I'm writing, she's very high up in aircraft design. She's talking about jet engines as Britain's moving to the jet age and so on, and gets involved in a lot of top security work as well, which leads to other plots involving spies in the one that's coming out this year, later this year.
00:15:10
Speaker
which is targeted actually by Russian spies. And it's perfectly plausible. Camping is just now a retired country gentleman, but his wife has this very top job in the defence industry. So doing the research on that to flesh out characters and so on, that's just great fun.
00:15:32
Speaker
and a lot of other bits and pieces, but mostly there is a lot in the books themselves, and quite a bit has been written by members of the Marjoram and of society, most of whom are far more versed within the subject writer than I am. I'm just a hack writer, but they're dedicated true friends.
00:15:59
Speaker
Well, I love that, Mike. And I love that I instantly liked the character of Amanda when I started reading Allingham. And I love that you're, you know, she's kind of becoming this heroine later in the series that you're working on. And in Sweet Danger, she did save the day. She saved Champion. So we have these nice bookends there. So I think that's lovely. Yes, very wonderful. And she has
00:16:28
Speaker
When Youngman Curtis wrote two and a half camping books after Algiers' death, the basic criticism was that they weren't funny. They had lost the humour. And so I wanted to put that back. And as I had a reputation for comedy crime, I had to have a sort where I have to clean up my act quite a lot to do a different sort of humour.
Adapting Classic Characters for a New Era
00:16:57
Speaker
But I think, I hope that worked, but the character of Amanda had got me more stick, as we would say here, than anything else I wrote about the campions. And when the book started to appear, everybody, well, not everybody, but quite a lot of criticism was, but Amanda's so horrible. She was this beautiful 18-year-old girl in sweet danger, and in a sense,
00:17:28
Speaker
but resourceful and brave and so on, and you've turned her into this smart-ass, sharp woman who's got a vicious tongue and has a bit of a heritage and bullying people. I thought, well, no. You see, they've been married for 25 years. I have been married for longer than that, and I know what happens to women. They do turn sharp and they do turn nasty.
00:17:58
Speaker
They'd grown up. Somebody who is well versed in the campaign, a great champion of marginality, criticized me, wrote to me and said, in one of the earlier ones, he didn't like the bit where Amanda and Albert were holding hands. Now, I mean, I'd give it a break. It's 1969, you know, just to be thankful that only holding
00:18:27
Speaker
But you can't wait because, you know, the picture of Amanda was so well done in those early books that, you know, it's difficult to imagine her 20, 30 years on. But I think people have accepted my version of what she's become, because she's certainly not lasting, she's clearly in love with Albert, as he is with her.
00:18:55
Speaker
and would do anything to protect, they would do anything to protect each other. As in the next book they do in Spain, so really do. And it's very much the next book is Amanda is at the centre of the plot and it's all centres around her and the trouble she's in. So that comes out in November.
00:19:21
Speaker
You can look for, that's Christmas presents ticked off the list already. Yes. So, Mike, what has surprised you about writing novels that feature a character who was developed by someone else? The main surprise is that I've got away with it for 12 books. It's odd. It's an odd feeling.
00:19:50
Speaker
because, I don't know, one feels terribly responsible. And with my own hero's angel, I mean, I don't really care. Anything could happen to him. And you'd like him or not. He was designed as a not very likeable character. Very much as an anti-hero. But people actually got to love him. So I think it was because he had a cat.
00:20:19
Speaker
even though the cat was a psychopath, and the cat was called Springsteen, and it was vicious. It attacked everybody. But I think because he looked after this cat, he found a lot of friends. But with Campion, again, one of the greats, I mean, there are, you know, there's Herco Poirot, there's Peter Whimsey, there's Albert Campion, and, you know, Roderick Allain and the Iron Martians,
00:20:50
Speaker
hero before great detectives of the golden age as it was. What I've done is just tried to take a golden age detective and throw him into the swinging 60s. So that was a challenge, but we seem to have got away with it so far anyway. But yes, it's weird because one feels responsible and there's a lot of things I can't do that I could do with my own characters.
00:21:19
Speaker
a lot of things that you can't let them say, apart from the fact that there are things that they might have said these days. There are things they would have said even in the 60s that are definitely no-go areas now.
Potential Casting and Legacy Preservation
00:21:35
Speaker
But with people of that age, I know, and if you read books written,
00:21:44
Speaker
by 60-year-olds that were published in the 60s. The language, you know, you have to think, wow, it's a bit nudging. And I hate it when books have to be redacted or things taken down. They should be fit in the time. But I mean, we're not making any great political points here, I think, except by mistake. So we take them all as. They're good stories, I hope,
00:22:11
Speaker
They're certainly good characters, and I can say that because I didn't invent them. Well, speaking of that, was there anything in carrying on Campion that you felt was untouchable? You've given him some other family members, you've taken him into the 60s, but was there anything that you thought, okay, this is something I have to remain steadfast to? I've had to by popular demand. I had to include the manservant lug.
00:22:40
Speaker
who Campion calls his left-hand man. And there's this, I mean, because it's irresistible. I mean, it is bizarre to think about a retired country gentleman who is 60, 69, 70 years old, having a man servant who is even older than he is. I mean, it's, you know, unless you live in a castle, in which case you have several men. It's not really,
00:23:09
Speaker
plausible, except unless he's accepted as part of the family. And so Lugg carries and comes all the way through. Now he can't do what he did in the early books, which is go around and beat people up and so on. But he's such a comic, wonderful comic creation. You can't possibly waste it. And so he has to come in there. So Albert keeps him on as a foil.
00:23:38
Speaker
and so on. And I think in the last book, or the nephew, Christopher says to Albert, so, why do you have the fat man? It's like, well, he keeps getting fatter. Why do you have that fat man hanging around? And he says, well, it's always useful. You know, being fat is useful, as I was camping. It makes him very difficult to kidnap.
00:24:06
Speaker
So there's lots of gags like that and of course very useful to have him as a link when, as in that book and one other I think, we do flashbacks to the 1930s. Well that's sort of in his boisterous prime as it were and he's a great character too and it's just I mean having a first name called such as Magus Fontaine
00:24:36
Speaker
the number of them, the trouble I've had with copy editors about, you know, spelling Magus Fontaine and explaining it. Well, it was a battle in the Boer War, I see. Oh, really? And it was even what we'd lost as well. So, but, you know, forget Boer War, what's that? Just put LUG, L-U-G-G, you know, everybody knows. And that's the one thing I get after every book, are people who write or
00:25:05
Speaker
send in reviews to Amazon and things, saying, you know, more lug please in the next one. You know, where was lug? So I sometimes think I'm writing the adventures of lug and Amanda rather than Albert Campion. I mean, it's the family core. But I think if you made it too big by running on the adventures of son of Campion, I'm not sure it would work. Not for me.
00:25:33
Speaker
So I know there were a couple of screen adaptations of Marjorie Ellingham's work. If there was a new adaptation, say of one of your books or even one of hers, who would you cast to play Albert Campion? Well, there was only one film, and that was The Tiger in Smoke, which is a brilliant book, probably her best. And they dropped the character of Albert Campion completely from it.
00:26:03
Speaker
but no one remembers that film very much. I'm from 1956. The television series I thought was very good, very underrated and although it's shown on one of these channels
00:26:22
Speaker
I'm very old and I'm not used to there being channels that start with the number 11 or 12. There's far too many, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, a few people in America have hundreds. But the BBC version, in which I played a small part, the
00:26:45
Speaker
The character there was Campion in the 30s, so a 30-year-old Homer Campion. It was done by Peter Davison, best known probably as one of the Doctor Who's. And he'd be perfect for my Campion now because he's about 69. And I met him at a convention.
00:27:10
Speaker
And I suggested, gave one of the books and suggested it to him. And I've forgotten entirely that he's primarily an actor rather than a fan of Campion. So his initial reaction was, how much? And I said, it's just an idea. I don't have a bunch. I said, well, get in touch with my agent. But he,
00:27:35
Speaker
I mean, he would be sweaty because he's exactly the right age for my aging campaign, if somebody was to do my books today. To go back to the 1930s, I don't know. I've never really thought of it because I've always thought of O'Davidson as my campaign because he's the right age for my campaign. The big problem will be casting luck.
00:28:04
Speaker
The guy in the TV series, Brian Glover, was brilliant. I actually thought it was inspired casting. So, Mike, is the Marjorie Allingham Society still active? Yes, it's very small, but they meet three or four times a year, and they always try and celebrate, like, this is the 50th anniversary of the publication of such a book, or they arrange
00:28:34
Speaker
visits to locations mentioned in the books as well. So yes, as a small but dedicated group of fanatics who I'm sure would pull me up if I get anything terribly wrong. But I make sure there's a map in the front. So there's a tradition I like to keep up from some of the older books and my cartographer.
00:29:02
Speaker
the guy who does the maps is not only a member of the Marjorie Allingham Society and knows the books far better than I do, but is also a leading light in the Sherlock Holmes Society. So, you know, I'm covered on two fronts there. He's got my back. I hope anyway. That's great. And I do love a book with a map. So do I. I think the
00:29:28
Speaker
Well, the book in Mystery Mile is one with the island and a little causeway called the Strud. Well,
Personal Connection and Geographical Influence
00:29:38
Speaker
about five or ten miles from here, there's an island called Mersey Island, which is connected to the mainland by a thing called the Strud. Guess where she got the idea? It does exist. But when I saw that, when I found I had a job here at the university in Colchester,
00:29:58
Speaker
I was looking around for places to live. We've got a big map out. And I saw the coastline and there's this island with the sea. I said, that looks familiar. And I got my copy of Misdream Island. It's the island in Misdream Island. So again, I thought, I must try and live there. I never managed that, but they were quite close.
00:30:20
Speaker
Well, it seems that there just really wasn't any other author who could possibly carry on this character and this work by Allingham. And as you said, living in the area and having been a fan as a young man and then having all these interesting connections, it just seems like it was meant to be. Well, yeah, I like to think that. It's been great fun.
00:30:50
Speaker
It's 10 years now I've been doing it. I must do something else. I had a, before, between my Angel series and the Campions, I had a go at writing historical ones based on my time as an archaeologist. And I might try and revisit some of that, although quite a bit of the archaeology has slipped into a couple of the Campions. There are at least two which have archaeological subplots.
00:31:18
Speaker
as well. It's never boring with a helmet around. It's always quite good. Good fun. Because people actually do like the characters and one treads carefully. Whereas with the Angel books, I was a bit more devil-maker, don't really mind what you think. But the album has to tread carefully, as he would. But then that's because I'm scared. He was diplomatic.
00:31:51
Speaker
Well, it's been such a treat to speak with you today, Mike. Before we go, can you share where listeners might find you on your website or social media? I don't do much social media, I'm afraid. I write for a magazine, an e-zine I'm supposed to call in nowadays.
00:32:12
Speaker
and called shots mag so it's www.shotsmag.co.uk and for about 15 years I had a regular column there and I'm now just doing odd things as the mood takes me and I'm on Facebook as Michael Ripley there are lots of Michael Ripley's but you'll see the one
00:32:43
Speaker
Okay. Well, we will add links to those in the show notes so listeners can track you down. So thank you so much, Mike, for joining us today. Like I said, it's been a real pleasure to, uh, to speak with you. Yes, Mike, thank you for joining us and thank you all for listening today to Clued in Mystery. I'm Brooke. And I'm Sarah, and we both love mystery.
00:33:10
Speaker
Clued In Mystery is written and produced by Brooke Peterson and Sarah M. Stephen. Music is by Shane Ivers. If you liked what you heard, please consider telling a friend, leaving a review, or subscribing with your favorite podcast listening app. Visit our website at cluedinmystery.com to sign up for our newsletter, The Clued In Chronicle, or to join our paid membership, The Clued In Cartel. We're on social media at Clued In Mystery.