Mr. Campion’s Séance

Life imitates art in Ripley’s ambitious seventh novel featuring Albert Campion, Margery Allingham’s aristocratic amateur sleuth (after 2019’s Mr. Campion’s Visit). In 1946, CID Supt. Stanislaus Oates consults Campion about a murder at London’s Grafton Club, an establishment that skirts the prohibition on selling alcohol by operating as a “bottle club,” ostensibly just serving patrons with booze that they themselves previously purchased. Tony Valletta, the club’s shady owner, was found with a bullet to the back of his head, kneeling in front of a safe, which contained IOUs from a number of rich and powerful men as well as an autographed copy of a mystery novel by bestselling author Evadne Childe. Valletta’s murder is an almost identical match for a fictional one in another novel Childe wrote, which was published before the killing. Campion doesn’t make any progress, but he gets another chance at cracking the case six years later when he’s contacted by a woman who worked in the Grafton Club at the time of the crime. Ripley spins a head-scratching whodunit while effectively recreating Allingham’s tone and characters. This clever continuation of a beloved series keeps getting better. (Aug.)