MR CAMPION'S CHRISTMAS

As Ripley’s bittersweet closing note makes clear, his 12th addition to the decorous chronicles of Margery Allingham’s beloved English sleuth will be his last.

It’s also a good deal less decorous than most of the others. The day after Christmas 1962 finds a severe snowstorm barreling toward Carterers, the Norfolk home to Albert Campion and his wife, aeronautical engineer Lady Amanda Fitton. Also headed their way is a bus thrown so far behind schedule by the blizzard that three American Air Force officers aboard it suggest to driver Graham Fisk that he diverge from his ordained path to seek the nearest town. En route, the bus plows into the entry gate to Carterers, where the passengers seek refuge. No sooner have Campion and Amanda surveyed the crowd—retired vicar Elis Breck, Dutch art dealer Fred De Vries, Devon postmistress Florence Pounder, Professor Hereward Henderson, and those Americans—than the phone lines go dead and they realize that this Boxing Day will be unique. Things get worse when one of the new arrivals is found dead, and worse still when Campion learns that not all of his unwilling guests are who they pretend to be. At least one of them, in fact, is a Russian agent plotting a most improbable revenge for the Soviet Union’s recent embarrassment over the Cuban missile crisis. So, what starts as a Christmas cozy, with a snowstorm sealing off the playing field from the rest of the world, turns into a game of cat-and-mouse between a group of strangers seeking to rally their very different gifts behind a common cause and a well-armed enemy who’ll stop at nothing.

A surprisingly lively adventure that belies its heroine’s ironic summary: “Sounds like a traditional Christmas to me.”