Episode 93: Mr. Campion’s Christmas

SPEAKERS
Sarah Harrison, Carolyn Daughters, Mike Ripley

Sarah Harrison: Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison: … but not a toxin …

Carolyn Daughters: And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

OUR SPONSOR
Before we get into a discussion about Mr. Campion’s Christmas by Mike Ripley and all the Margery Allingham Albert Campion mysteries, let’s introduce our sponsor! Today’s sponsor is Linden Botanicals, a Colorado-based company that sells the world’s healthiest herbal teas and extracts. Their team has traveled the globe to find the herbs that offer the best science-based support for stress relief, energy, memory, mood, kidney health, joint health, digestion, and inflammation. U.S. orders over $75 ship free. To learn more, visit LindenBotanicals.com and use code MYSTERY to get 15% off your first order.

Sarah Harrison  01:38

Carolyn, we are back with Mr. Mike Ripley.

Carolyn Daughters  01:41

I’m very excited. We have two episodes with Mike, and we get to talk in this episode about Mr. Campion’s Christmas. But if you haven’t caught the other episode, please go back and listen. He’s going to talk all things Margery Allingham Albert Campion. We cover mysteries and spy thrillers from the Golden Age onward.

Sarah Harrison  02:00

Yeah, fascinating episode. But let’s focus on the Christmas and some more of Mike’s work. He’s pretty prolific.

Carolyn Daughters  02:10

This is Mr. Campion’s Christmas. 1962 Norfolk Boxing Day looks set to be a quiet affair for the Campions when they’re snowed in in their remote farmhouse, Carterers, until a charabank full of pilgrims traveling from London to the Shrine of Our Lady in nearby Walsingham crashes into their imposing granite gate posts. The family unexpectedly find themselves playing host to the eccentric passengers, but any lingering festive cheer is in short supply when a shocking discovery is made the following day, while a terrifying twist reveals that some of the guests are not who they seem. Which, if any, can they trust? Suddenly hostage to events, the Campions are drawn into a fiendish web of espionage as the Cold War comes chillingly close to home. Published in 2024, Mr. Campion’s Christmas is the winner of the 2025 Crime Fest Last Laugh Award. Publishers Weekly called it a refreshingly surprise, packed entry in an always excellent series.

Sarah Harrison  03:15

Mike Ripley is the author of 28 novels, including the award-winning Angel series comedy of comedy thrillers, and one of the few authors to win the Crime Writers Last Laugh Award three times. Maybe you thought it was twice, but he just won it again last week, as we learned So, three times, folks. Are you the only one for the three time group?

Mike Ripley  03:41

I’d like to say yes, but I’d probably be lying.

Carolyn Daughters  03:45

Okay, just say yes. I would just say yes.

Sarah Harrison  03:50

From 1989 to 2008, he was a crime fiction critic for The Daily Telegraph and then The Birmingham Post, reviewing more than 950 crime novels. He co-edited three volumes of fresh blood stories by new British writers, including Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Ken Bruin, Charlie Higson, and Christopher Brookmeyer. He was also a scriptwriter on the BBC series Lovejoy. Mike completed the third Albert Campion novel, left unfinished on the death of Pip Youngman Carr, husband of Margery Allingham, in 1969. Mr. Campion’s Farewell was published in the UK and the US in 2014, and Mike has continued the Campion series annually, with the 12th and final book in the series, Mr. Campion’s Christmas, appearing in 2024. Described by The Times as England’s funniest crime writer, Mike is a respected critic of crime fiction writing for The Guardian Daily, Telegraph, and The Times. He writes the monthly Getting Away with Murder column on Shots magazine. He was the series editor of the Austar crime and top notch thrillers and Prince, rescuing and reviving more than 100 crime novels and thrillers that did not deserve to be forgotten. He also became known as the unofficial historian of the British thriller after the publication of Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, which won the 2018 HRF Keating award for non iction. Welcome back, Mike. We asked Mike to do a reading for Mr. Campion’s Christmas, and he said, “No way.”

Carolyn Daughters  05:28

He said, reading his own work was not his thing, but reading other people’s is his thing.

Sarah Harrison  05:35

Said, I like to read other people’s books, sign other people’s books, write other characters. Will you tell?

Carolyn Daughters  05:41

Will you quickly tell us the story of signing, signing another author’s name and how good you are at adapting?

Mike Ripley  05:51

Well, there’s a very famous crime writer in this country called Colin Dexter, who created Inspector Morse, and we were great friends. For many years, we would end up in the same book shop or the same convention or wherever, same event, and we’d be end up sitting on same table, signing our books. Now, the queue for Collin’s Inspector Morse books went around the block. I had two customers, usually, and so I finished first. But while sitting there, I watched Colin, who wrote very precisely, very slowly, very carefully, very neatly, and we personalize every signature, and I started doodling on a piece of paper and copying his signature. And after about six or seven of them, Colin glanced at me and said, “you know, that’s pretty good. You only do the next couple.” So the next sort of books that came out were some were not entirely original. Well, probably more valuable for it.

Carolyn Daughters  07:06

Oh, I those would at auction be very valuable.

Sarah Harrison  07:09

Extra rare.

Mike Ripley  07:11

This is a curious thing. I once a guy I worked with in Scotland called Alec,. He bought one of my Angel books. Before, long, before I started doing Campion, and he said he wanted it personalized. So on the front, you know, the front space, I put “To Alec, and only Alec,” so he can’t give it to anybody else for Christmas, the mean bastard. So I’m Mike Ripley, and he was quite pleased with this. A year later, I saw it on eBay with quote, a unique inscription.

Carolyn Daughters  07:57

Interesting and also kind of horrifying.

Sarah Harrison  08:01

Well, on that note, Mike is actually going to do a reading for us, but not from Mr. Campion’s Christmas. What are you reading from Mike?

Mike Ripley  08:07

Well, I’m not an actor, so I never try and do my own stuff. But I have had, I have paid quite a good living trying to in, pretending I’m somebody else. This is a very piece of Raymond Chandler that will almost certainly not get past a politically correct editor these days. From The Long Goodbye, there are blondes and blondes, and it’s almost a joke word nowadays, all blondes have their points, except perhaps the metallic ones, who are as blonde as a Zulu under the bleach and as to disposition as soft as a sidewalk. There is the small, cute blonde who cheeps and twitters and the big, statuesque blonde who straight arms you with a nice blue glare. There is the blonde who gives you the up from under look and smells lovely and shimmers and hangs on your arm and is always very, very tired. When you take her home, she makes that hopeless gesture, helpless gesture, and has that goddamn headache, and you would like to slug her, except you’re glad you found out about the headache before you invested too much time and money and hope in her, because her headache will always be there a weapon that never wears out and is as deadly as the Bravo’s rapier or Lucretius poison vile. There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears, as long as it’s mink and it goes on, but it’s brilliant, awesome.

Sarah Harrison  09:46

We’ve read a couple of Raymond Chandler this year.

Carolyn Daughters  09:48

And we’ll get to The Long Goodbye. But because we’re history of mystery focused, we are chronologically not there yet. We are chronological, folks. Mike, it’s great to have you back.

Mike Ripley  10:02

Chronologically challenged is what I am at my age.

Carolyn Daughters  10:08

In what way are you chronologically challenged?

Mike Ripley  10:11

My age.

Sarah Harrison  10:18

Well, where to begin? There was so much here, and one of the things that struck me is probably based on my own limited knowledge. We talked in the last episode about how Margery Allingham went a lot of different directions with her books. Sometimes she was light and funny, sometimes she was totally serious. As I was reading your version of Campion, I was thinking back to what we read from Traitor’s Purse. And this Campion, at least in the setting, seemed so much softer. Of course, he knew who he was. He didn’t have a concussion at this point, and Amanda seemed much less adoring of him than she did in Traitor’s Purse. For example, in Traitor’s Purse, she kind of just would just expect a miracle. It seemed like as a run of the mill expectation for Campion, and in this one, he was more of the husband, like, stop your nonsense. I’m worried about our son.

Carolyn Daughters  11:28

She does make several references in Mr. Campion’s Christmas, though, about how Albert will figure it out. Albert will solve this or that.

Sarah Harrison  11:37

Okay, that’s good. But I didn’t finish the book, full disclosure, we got it and I didn’t have enough time to finish the whole thing, so I’m only about halfway through.

Carolyn Daughters  11:46

But I agree that she feels different to me than in Traitor’s Purse. I guess that’s part of it. The interest of these characters aging is they are not static characters. They’re not exactly who they were decades earlier.

Sarah Harrison  12:07

Talk to us a little bit about that, how you change the characters, how you like to use them, especially.

Mike Ripley  12:14

I think you’re absolutely right. They’re not static. People aren’t static, and one thing I learned very early on was when a member of the Margery Allingham society took me to task for a scene where Campion and Amanda are holding hands. That would never happen. I said, for God’s sake, they’ve been married for 25 years.

Sarah Harrison  12:46

Hopefully.

Mike Ripley  12:48

And because there was an image with Amanda, of her as a girl, as an when you first meet her, I think she’s 16, or even younger, one of their very early books. And so there’s that innocence, and yet Margery made her an aircraft engineer, and that’s weird. Who would have thought of that? I wouldn’t as a career choice. It would never have occurred to me.

Sarah Harrison  13:19

Really, why?

Mike Ripley  13:21

I always thought this was a bit in well, no formal education, no money, right? And I thought this is crazy. But whilst I was researching one of the books, Mr. Campion’s Wings, where I came across this woman called Blossom Miles, who is exactly in the period when Margery was writing in the 30s. She was aristocratic. She was rich, she was going to be married, I think possibly was married to a guy who was going to be vice jet governor of India. But she had a flying instructor because she was going to fly out to India, and she ended up having an affair with the flying instructor.

Sarah Harrison  14:20

Oh, dear.

Mike Ripley  14:23

Chaos, because they were quite posh divorce, and soon she ended up marrying the flying instructor, and they set up Miles. His name was miles, and they set up an aircraft company, and she designed airplanes, including for Charles Lindbergh. And the company, Miles, went on to make jets during the war for the British, which were never put into service, and the designs were all stolen by the Americans, which is basically the plot of Mr. Campion’s Wings, a book that precedes Mr. Campion’s Christmas.

Sarah Harrison  15:01

Oh, that’s hilarious.

Mike Ripley  15:03

But this woman, who came from a sort of society background, was slightly aristocratic, actually did become a designer of aircraft, and an important one during the war. So why couldn’t Amanda? Because Margery would have known about this woman. I think that’s where she got the idea.

Sarah Harrison  15:30

I find it’s totally delightful. I love the character of Amanda. Ss an engineer myself, I naturally love that she is one as well. But way before there were very many of us in the field. So I thought she was a really cool character.

Mike Ripley  15:46

She is reason the bad guys crash into the house Carterers, so you better finish reading the damn book.

Sarah Harrison  15:57

I’m going to. I was like, Man, I wish we scheduled this a month later so I could have gotten all the way through.

Mike Ripley  16:06

Carterers, the house is named after Youngman Carter, and there’s a scene in Mr. Campion’s Christmas where he says they weren’t quite sure where the name of the house came from.

Mike Ripley  16:18

Yeah, I remember that.

Mike Ripley  16:19

Because Mr. Campion had never met anyone called Carterers.

Sarah Harrison  16:24

Oh, that’s so funny.

Mike Ripley  16:26

And of course, the hope the share of bang, which is an old English word for a coach a bus. They are pilgrims. And it’s like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The pilgrims all have different stories to tell. And they’re all going to a shrine, except it’s not Canterbury, it’s Waltham, which really is a shrine in Norfolk, just down the road. And that winter was one where all the roads got blocked and things got cut off. And when you get to the bit I was proud of was the hop light, remember, it is, but there’s a character in there who’s the one who goes under the radar, and the note at the end says it’s quite possible she’d read in Fleming’s doctor no.

Carolyn Daughters  17:22

Yes, and that particular character was possibly my favorite character.

Mike Ripley  17:34

The love of Lugg’s life suddenly.

Carolyn Daughters  17:36

I kept hoping there was a follow-on book because I wanted to read the Florence Pounder-Lugg mystery series next. So in case you’re looking for a direction. Florence Pounder and Magersfontein Lugg would be an amazing crime fighting due.

Mike Ripley  17:58

But we can’t say too much about Florence Pounder.

Carolyn Daughters  18:01

No, we cannot. I can just simply say the female characters in Mr. Campion’s Christmas I loved. I loved Lady Amanda. I loved Florence Pounder. I loved Persephone Thursby. I mean, really, just excellent characters.

Mike Ripley  18:28

Yes, right, Lloyd Thursby.

Carolyn Daughters  18:31

Oh, I did. I wrote a note about The Maltese Falcon. And I said, Miss Wonderly. I thought, Okay, this is a hearkening to Floyd Thursby, but you left the F off. Yes, I had that note here.

Mike Ripley  18:44

That’s awesome, and how his face his favorite TV show was Rawhide, which featured this young American actor called Clint Eastwood. Never gonna do anything.

Carolyn Daughters  18:56

Yes, I think Amanda calls him dishy or something. Yeah, I mean, who knows whatever happened to him in his career?

Sarah Harrison  19:06

Yeah, we’ll see.

Carolyn Daughters  19:11

Mr. Campion’s Christmas is a very classic sort of British Christmas mystery. There’s this cozy feel to Mr. Campion’s Christmas at times. To begin with, you have a country house, a murder, this sense of espionage. It has a “And Then There Were None” sort of feel to it, where they’re all stuck in this space and can’t really extricate themselves because of this blizzard. I’m calling it sort of a cozy thriller. I think in our last episode, you called it potentially a farce, and it does have farcical elements for sure. Did you intentionally bring all of these different Golden Age elements into this book as this is the last. One I’m doing. It’s number 12. What were you thinking as you as you were writing it?

Mike Ripley  20:07

Guilty as charged on that one, because the classic trope is the house was cut off by the blizzard, and then you have a closed circle of suspects so that, and they can’t move, they can’t get out, and so then the twist I thought, was you end up in a without giving it too much away to people who haven’t finished the damn book yet.

Sarah Harrison  20:40

Yeah, well, I’m definitely the only one.

Mike Ripley  20:45

But the twist is, then it ends up with the bad guys being trapped in the house, and the house being put under siege by one person and then too. But that was all the sort of turning on its head, from being closed inside to suddenly open up from outside. I mean, one of those scenes I was particularly proud of was the Miss Pounder leaving one of the bad guys running down beside the house and then ducking whilst camping. Just comes out with a spade, because with no weapons, this was the idea just sheer violence. Have a stage, but then, of course, there’s the helicopter ship and the arrival of a tank at the end, which just just makes it more and more surreal. Allingham would have liked that. The nicest review of that book was yet something unknown to me, so I don’t know where to send the check. An American reviewer on Amazon simply said, No one writes as well as Margery Allingham that she would have smiled at this one. So proud of that.

Sarah Harrison  22:28

That’s awesome.

Carolyn Daughters  22:30

I felt it in reading this like I was reading Margery Allingham for sure. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone be able to adopt someone else’s voice as successfully as you do in Mr. Campion’s Christmas. It kind of blew my mind when I was reading it, to be honest.

Mike Ripley  22:51

Well, thanks. I think I was actually more worried about Lugg. Because Lugg has serious followers. Hhis fans are legion and possibly hiding behind a bush somewhere near you. I would get mail saying that in next book, more Lugg. And there’s one of them, Mr. Campion’s Coven, where he’s on the Essex marsh, which is real Allingham territory. And Lugg hasn’t done much, but at just at the right moment at the end, which is, I think, what Allingham would have done, the crucial moment near the end, there’s a man with a shotgun, and Lugg just walks up to us, excuse me, and only Lugg would have had the nerve to do that only Allingham would have had the nerve to write it like that. And so it’s when you get things, it’s very satisfying, and you’re very kind. Thank you. Don’t stop keep going.

Carolyn Daughters  24:17

I have tons of praise for this book. It was so much fun to read, and it can take a very serious turn. There are very serious scenes in this book, and there is a lot at stake and a lot at play, and yet some of the comic relief is Lloyd Thursby. At times, he seems simple, and yet he can snap into action or understand things. He hears things other I don’t want to spoil anything. He hears things other people don’t hear.

Mike Ripley  24:52

You see, unlike some people, I’ve read it.

Sarah Harrison  24:55

Oh man, oh man.

Carolyn Daughters  24:58

And then his daughter in law, who is the housekeeper, no matter what is happening in this household, she always has a tray of mince pies and it says it’s overflowing. It’s so heavy that she’s sometimes awkwardly coming in the room trying to carry — like I have never so much food, and I just seems like that. And then he’s way into the Clint Eastwood westerns. And he’s always like, Hey, is the power back on? I want to watch my westerns. There are some really, like, light and quirky things in Mr. Campion’s Christmas.

Mike Ripley  25:36

Margery Allingham was quirky. She loved quirky. And the funny thing about Persephone baking, constantly baking, there’s a trick where she’s breaking lots of loaves of bread, turns about the tin, and she taps them, the fist locks on the base and very fine crime writer called Catherine air, who sadly died earlier this year about 95, but one of our great fans, one of my fans, and I was one of hers, And she wrote to me, saying, I’ve never heard this. Never heard of this locking the base. And I said, Oh, this is well known Norfolk traditions. My wife does it. No idea where it comes. I just thought, put it in there, because it’s it’s a thing. It’s a quirky thing. Allingham would have noticed. That’s what I like. But they’re all good things. I mean, I still think Florence Pounder, the handing back the Beretta because it didn’t have any stopping power.

Carolyn Daughters  27:01

She’s definitely a discerning woman of judgment, but we don’t want to spoil her character too much, but wow, what an interesting character. And then I kept thinking, Ah, there’s some potential budding romance here between her and Lugg.

Mike Ripley  27:17

I think he was smitten.

Carolyn Daughters  27:21

I think it was reciprocal. I think she was kind of smitten. She’s a hard one to read, but I really liked the idea of the two of them. One thing I really loved about all of these characters as we’re introduced. So I’m not spoiling anything here. We’re introduced to this whole body of characters. In the first few chapters, there is a blizzard, and it is of epic proportions. And so they’re all going to be in Carterers, Campion’s home, and they each have a story to tell. So we have, you know, that the Tabard Inn right from Chaucer, right? We have, like, all the pilgrims coming, and they all have been several of the chapters even are the tale of this individual or that, you know, the pious postman.

Mike Ripley  28:14

I never said it was original, you know. Chaucer, sue me. I don’t care.

Carolyn Daughters  28:18

I love it, and I love how they all have their own story. And I thought I had a sense of what each of these characters was all about, and yet, without spoiling anything, by the end of Mr. Campion’s Christmas, my perceptions of many of the characters were changed or evolved. I saw them do things I didn’t expect them to do, but that felt organic and true, and I thought that was really fun for a Christmas tale. With regard to this number of characters, it’s easy, I think, to make some of them sort of generic, and yet you did not. What was your thought behind giving an actual sort of story or story arc to each of these characters throughout the book?

Mike Ripley  29:13

Well, Mr. Campion’s Christmas had to be 90,000 words, so there you go. I know I’d always had this idea, the Chaucer idea of they all had a tale to tell.

Mike Ripley  29:35

Some of them I knew from the start. I mean, the priest who was going to Walsingham, and then the the guy is the suspicious Dutch guy with a painting that came simply because there’s a guy called Fred du Rice who really is called Fred du. Me, who is a friend of mine who always tells me where I’ve made a mistake. I mean, he is sitting on my shoulder. I wish to God I could get rid of him, but he’s there. So any minor mistake, anyhow. So this book, I thought I’m gonna, I’m gonna make it a Dutch character, so I’m gonna get Fred to tell me, and if there are any mistakes, I’m gonna blame him. So I got this Dutch character, I said, basically suspicious guy with a painting that may or may not be very valuable. And so he gave the name and the bit about the painting and the trick, and I put in the bit about it, the act, what it was actually a painting of which would because that was true. I mean, the original icon went story back, but it’s all a red herring. But it was just fun to do in Mr. Campion’s Christmas. At the end of the day, it’s a character arc for a character who isn’t that involved. But hell, you know, come on, we writers have a tough life. We have to have some pleasures.

Sarah Harrison  31:26

I love all the easter eggs. I love all the references. I think it’s worth mentioning, since these episodes will actually air probably a few weeks apart, what you mentioned in the last episode about your upcoming book, it has a really cool feature about the way you use references. Can you tell us a little bit about that again, if folks don’t remember from the last episode?

Mike Ripley  31:48

Well, I have no idea how people will take it, but I describe it as a crime novel written by somebody who has read far too many criminals. And the whole thing is about a murder that is, oh, two deaths that are linked 30 or more years apart. And the main character is an inoffensive local librarian who just happens to be a specialist in crime fiction. And if you believe that, then you believe anything.

Sarah Harrison  32:39

That’s coming out in September.

Carolyn Daughters  32:42

Buried Above Ground.

Mike Ripley  32:46

Yeah, here and in the U.S. simultaneously. But it’s also done in a different way. I’m trying to do it in an unconventional way. So sometimes one part is actually narrated by a ghost, because he’s the picture. But hopefully the whole point is it because it’s an immersive, I think I’m maybe inventing a new genre, which is rubbish.

Sarah Harrison  33:26

You heard it here first, folks, crap coming out September.

Carolyn Daughters  33:41

That’s the other thing, because forgot to mention entirely that it’s Mr. Campion’s Christmas.

Carolyn Daughters  33:51

It’s Christmas. I had no idea from the title. And when I got in and it was Boxing Day, I was like, Christmas?

Mike Ripley  34:18

That was being the author, being terribly dedicated to his research, because blizzards that hit Britain actually didn’t start till Boxing Day.

Carolyn Daughters  34:30

Aha, okay.

Sarah Harrison  34:33

Is it based on a real blizzard?

Mike Ripley  34:35

Oh, yeah, it wiped out the entire country for a while. But the reason is, I thought, well, I’ve got to remember, they’ve got a Christmas tree in there. So how can we use the Christmas tree?

Carolyn Daughters  34:53

And it is used in a coffin without spoiling it the Christmas. The Christmas tree plays a role in this story. Yeah, perfect.

Mike Ripley  35:05

A very clever person knows how to fuse it.

Carolyn Daughters  35:13

There’s a vicar, a retired Reverend Breck, in the story, and he talks about this wartime experience he had had, I think, in India and Burma, with this very cowardly soldier. And that soldier goes on to become a famous actor. And in your notes at the end of Mr. Campion’s Christmas, you say something like, in my household, growing up, if a show came on with a particular British actor, we turned off the television. I was wondering if you can you tell us who is this actor?

Mike Ripley  35:57

I’m not going to. Oh no, okay, because I, because I have no proof, I’m going up, that means true story. Yeah, the priest. Priest. I come from an Anglo-Catholic background, so we have British Church of England, and we have vicars, but we call priests? When I was being christened, way back, long time ago, in the years when Margery Allingham was writing The Tiger in the Smoke, my parents were in a little mining village in Yorkshire, were taking me a pram down to the church to be christened. And to get to the church, you passed the vicarage, and coming out of the vicarage right on time was the vicar with his vestments, and my mother and my father, and as they get up to the church board, she said, Okay, we’re going to christen the baby. What name have you chosen? My mother said, Rupert Gordon. And the priest said no. My mother always listened to what the priest said. Well, my father, you know, said nothing against my mother or the priest. What means? You can’t call him that he was born on St Michael’s Day. So it’s got to be Michael.

Sarah Harrison  37:45

Everyone born on St Michael’s days named Michael?

Mike Ripley  37:50

Yes. And off he went. And as they’re in the awakening going to the church, my mother and father, going quickly, going. Michael Rupert, Michael Gordon?. Wait a minute. You need a second name. What’s your middle name? David. So I became Michael David, and that’s my name. The priest’s first name was Enoch.

Sarah Harrison  38:29

I love it. I keep wanting to name a child Enoch, really?

Sarah Harrison  38:35

Not in this country. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Sarah Harrison  38:37

He’s my favorite character. No, not in that country. Why?

Mike Ripley  38:45

Well, the most famous recognition there was a guy called Enoch Powell, who was part fascist, part Ku Klux Klan, but it is actually an old Welsh name, but I got off lightly.

Sarah Harrison  39:08

Yeah, you didn’t get Enoch.

Mike Ripley  39:13

I was cool about that.

Mike Ripley  39:15

But you were almost Rupert, who’s one of the characters in Mr. Campion’s Christmas.

Mike Ripley  39:21

The priest always told us the story about the I won’t name him. I never have but you’ve probably never seen Bridge Over the River Kwai.

Carolyn Daughters  39:36

I’ve seen it and read it.

Sarah Harrison  39:38

I think I’ve seen it.

Mike Ripley  39:39

Yeah, I haven’t read it. Well, I’ve certainly read it, but we weren’t allowed to watch it.

Sarah Harrison  39:49

I’m gonna watch it. Re-watch it. Yeah, figure this mystery out.

Mike Ripley  39:55

Oh, come on. There’s only one bridge in it.

Sarah Harrison  39:58

But I don’t know off the top of my head.

Carolyn Daughters  40:11

So just quickly, because it’s just made me think of it when. So my birth name is Carolyn, and my parents announced this to my dad’s parents after I was born, and my grandmother, a very stately, very strong-willed woman, bsaid, no, no, no. And from that point on, I was Caroline. She said, No. Carolyn. Caroline. So my birth name is with a, y — l, y, n — and my grandmother rejected it soundly and said, nope, Caroline.

Mike Ripley  40:58

Well, my my wife is Alyson with a y, which is very unusual in this country. And I can only put it down to the fact that her parents had been to see the Glenn Miller story, where Mrs. Glenn Miller is played by June Allison, and her mother had misspelled it.

Carolyn Daughters  41:30

Interesting, or it was an homage in some way, maybe, I don’t know, even unconscious.

Mike Ripley  41:37

Less interesting.

Carolyn Daughters  41:40

Than than a typographical error.

Mike Ripley  41:44

Well, yeah, they’re never interesting.

Carolyn Daughters  41:47

Ah, that’s funny.

Sarah Harrison  41:49

Mike, you’ve written so much stuff beyond Mr. Campion’s Christmas, just reading your bio and reading about your life and your work has been it’s a lot. You’ve been really busy. One of the things I was wondering, though, is you write TV as well. How is it different to write something like Lovejoy versus writing your mystery novels? Is it different?

Mike Ripley  42:14

Yeah, the money’s Great, yeah. Okay, so the money,

Sarah Harrison  42:17

Okay, the money has a factor.

Mike Ripley  42:21

It’s the only factor. It’s a lot easier, and it’s better pay.

Sarah Harrison  42:29

It’s easier to write, sort of like screenplay work rather than novels.

Mike Ripley  42:34

Yeah, I would love to, but so would everybody else out there, and at least with a novel, you write it and you’re the boss. If you write for TV, you have to accept there are 12 of the people who are gonna say something and gonna change it. So that’s okay. Colin Dexter, again, my old mate from the Inspector Morse days, always said, if you write for TV, just take the money and don’t argue. If you want artistic control, don’t take the money. He said he was overwhelmed to find that he was a millionaire in Chile. What? Because? Well, the rioters had mounted up so that whatever the currency of Chile couldn’t take them out of the country. Had to go to Chile to spend them. Whoa, which cost you never did. That’s funny.

Carolyn Daughters  43:59

Well, Mike, this has been amazing that you have given us two episodes. Sarah, do you have another question?

Sarah Harrison  44:08

Well, I have 100 more questions about Mr. Campion’s Christmas. Well, I just want to ask a little bit about because we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing some different experts who are members of the society, or even presidents or Werowances of the society for which they are a member of the of their favorite authors. I want to hear a little bit about the Margery Allingham Society. It seemed like you joined quite some time ago. Is it still active?

Carolyn Daughters  44:39

Can Sarah and I join?

Mike Ripley  44:44

I don’t know whether it is very active, actually anymore. I’m not the right best person to ask about that, because the one of the leading lights so can Canadian lady called Carolyn Cocky, who who died last year, and it’s rather faded from memory. I’m afraid I’m not the best person to ask about that.

Carolyn Daughters  45:15

And I did reach out to that society, and we exchanged some emails. So there is somebody checking their email box, but that’s as far as I know of activity.

Sarah Harrison  45:25

Yeah, well, Mike, what’s the best way for folks to learn more about you, to tell you the truth you are hard to get a hold of. I tried when we wanted to talk to you about Mr. Campion’s Christmas. I was looking everywhere for an email, and I finally, I think, found your agent or something, and emailed her, and then lost all hope.

Mike Ripley  45:42

I don’t have an agent. I fired them all. My problem isn’t I’ve never had a problem not being found. My problem is, too many people know who I am. Now what I’ll do is, I mean, I have had for many, many years a column called Getting Away with Murder at Shots Magazine, which is syndicated in the American e magazine pleasures. And I did 200 columns on that, and now try to retire from that, but like The Godfather, you try and get out.

Carolyn Daughters  46:43

I think that website is shotsmag.co.uk. We’ll include those links, yes, a lot of stuff.

Mike Ripley  47:01

Most of it’s syndicated on deadly pleasures in UK and US. And I decided to try and do a thing called Ripster Revivals.

Sarah Harrison  47:18

Ripster Revivals.

Mike Ripley  47:21

I just think I won’t do new books anymore. I’ll just do stuff I like to read.

Carolyn Daughters  47:26

Sure, nice. I like it.

Mike Ripley  47:29

So after about five or six of them, somebody emailed me saying, What’s the difference between Ripster Revivals and your old Getting Away with Murder column? I don’t know.

Carolyn Daughters  47:44

I’ll just do it and you, you recently rogue Frederick Forsyth’s obituary. Yeah, for The Guardian. He passed on June 9.

Mike Ripley  47:58

Yeah, I’m a member of an august body known as the SOE special obituaries, executive guardian. No, I’m kidding.

Carolyn Daughters  48:11

This is a thing now, yeah, we’ll include a link.

Mike Ripley  48:18

I have written obituaries of crime writers. So at Crime Fest last month, I was able to say, I do write obituaries for The Guardian. So I’m looking around to see who looks unhealthy.

Carolyn Daughters  48:38

Do you have a priority list. Like you have a one to 10, like I get, I gotta get started on these.

Mike Ripley  48:44

Yeah, the one for Freddie Forsyth I wrote into 2017.

Sarah Harrison  48:53

No, is that true?

Carolyn Daughters  48:56

They’re often written in advance.

Sarah Harrison  49:02

Yeah, you got to make sure they don’t win some award right at the end.

Carolyn Daughters  49:12

And we got, when we got the copies of Mr. Campion’s Christmas, which we highly recommend. I’m looking forward to reading other books in your series, in addition to Allingham’s original series. But we got these books and we got a third copy, which at the holiday we are going to giveaway.

Sarah Harrison  49:37

Your own Christmas present, folks.

Carolyn Daughters  49:40

Good, and we’re going to put in there whoever wins it for this person and this person only.

Mike Ripley  49:58

Now, okay, right? Promise me one thing go you will find one on some books or something. Look up an Angel book. Okay, yes, that was my message, and particularly Angels in Arms, which is where I was just getting my first sort of contract in America, which is disaster. Oh, but to do it, I invented an American character to go in the series.

Sarah Harrison  50:36

Oh, that’s funny.

Mike Ripley  50:38

Yeah. If you like Florence Pounder, you’ll like her. She’s more violent, but she’s quite good, excellent.

Sarah Harrison  50:47

I like her already. I do too. Alright, Michael, it’s been a complete pleasure to have you. Thank you so much, and we’re looking forward to your new book coming out in September.

Mike Ripley  51:00

Well, I’ll send you a once I get one, I’ll send you a PDF if you want.

Sarah Harrison  51:04

Yeah, that would be absolutely lovely. Thank you. Thank you reading it one day.

Carolyn Daughters  51:14

Never live that down. Never admit such a thing. Sarah, never. Goodbye.

Carolyn Daughters  45:13
We hope you enjoyed this episode on Mr. Campion’s Christmas by Mike Ripley. If you did, it would mean the world to us if you would subscribe and then you’ll never miss an episode. Be sure to leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts Spotify, or wherever you listen to Tea, Tonic & Toxin. That way, likeminded folks can also find us on all platforms.

Sarah Harrison
You can learn more about all our book selections at teatonicandtoxin.com. You can also comment, weigh in, and follow along with what we’re reading and discussing @teatonicandtoxin on Instagram and Facebook. And you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, please visit our website, teatonicandtoxin.com to check out current and past reading lists and support our labor of love, starting at only $3 a month.

Carolyn Daughters
We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.