So what’s funny about crime? Well nothing, of course, as I once had to answer a very irate member of the audience at a library talk. But crime fiction, I argued, could be very funny indeed.
There is, of course, a long tradition of British comic crime writing, certainly going back to the 1930s with Anthony Berkeley, Leo Bruce, and Michael Innes and then through Edmund Crispin, Colin Watson, Joyce Porter, Sarah Caudwell, Simon Brett and Peter Guttridge to today’s tearaways such as Jasper Fforde, Malcolm Pryce, Christopher Brookmyre and Colin Bateman. And those are only the ones I would class as comedians (and who Julian Symons would have called farceurs). There are scores of other crime writers who are naturally witty writers (think Reginald Hill) but whose main target has not necessarily been the funny bone.
I always realised that being a writer of comedy crime put me in something of a persecuted minority, but it also put me in exceedingly good company. It was frustrating for sure. Comic crime novels date quicker than scary (or ultra- violent) ones and they tend not to translate well, in my case not even into American. I am, however, oddly proud of having been told by a retired Swedish editor that I had “too much humour ever to be translated in Scandinavia”.
I only began to have qualms when I took on the completion of the last ‘Albert Campion’ novel left unfinished on the death of Youngman Carter, Margery Allingham’s widower, in 1969. Margery’s famous ‘Golden Age’ detective has a career going back to 1929 and her novels put here up there as one of the Queens of British crime writing alongside Christie and Sayers.
Although I was working from a Youngman Carter draft, Albert was still perceived as Margery Allingham’s character and a much-loved one at that. How would die-hard Campion fans take the news that their hero was being revived (albeit gently, as he would be thinking of retirement by now) by an unashamed comedian?
As it turned out, the ones I have spoken to so far have been either incredible supportive or proficient liars. One distinguished crime writer told me ‘That’s good news. You’ll put the fun back into Campion which Youngman Carter couldn’t’ and another, less distinguished, said: ‘Well, your prose can’t be as leadened as Youngman Carter’s!’ (I think both were being unfair). Best of all, a retired academic and lifelong Campion fan wrote to me advising: ‘Don’t do Youngman Carter…do you! It’s certain to be readable and fun and the dafter the better because her (Margery’s) style strikes me as coherent daftness.’
That was the piece of advice I took to heart and in completing the first Albert Campion novel for 44 years, I decided to have as much fun as possible to thank the old fruit for the joy he has given me as a reader. Whether other Campion fans think I have managed to do that with all the respect and admiration that is due to one of the great characters of English crime fiction remains to be seen.
Mr Campion’s Farewell is published by Severn House in April and Mike Ripley will be talking about his long association with Albert Campion at Heffers bookshop, Cambridge on April 15th (http://mike-ripley.eventbrite.co.uk ).
