Mike Ripley Books in Order

This metafictional mystery follows a librarian, a blogger and publishing insiders racing to track down the reclusive author behind a forgotten crime series. Their competing agendas over backlist rights spiral into deceit, obsession and, eventually, murder.

Snowed in at their remote Norfolk farmhouse on Boxing Day 1962, the Campion family reluctantly shelters a coachload of pilgrims bound for a nearby shrine. A shocking discovery and a Cold War twist turn their cosy holiday into a tense espionage siege.

Retired in the 1970s, Albert Campion is asked to clear a construction tycoon of killing a troublesome journalist. A notebook linking the case to 1932 forces him to dig into half‑forgotten memories, as flashbacks show how old secrets shaped fresh violence.

When Lady Amanda Campion is arrested under the Official Secrets Act during a Cambridge ceremony, Albert is forced to take an interest in her hush‑hush Goshawk aircraft project. A horrific "accident" in the hangar points to espionage and lethal ambition.

In 1972 Albert Campion is roped into an Evadne Childe society meeting and asked to investigate a troubled TV adaptation of one of her novels. On a Dorset location shoot he encounters ghost‑hunters, an ancient mosaic and a saboteur prepared to kill.

A Soho club owner is shot in circumstances uncannily predicted by a best‑selling detective novel written months before. As further crimes echo fiction over the next two decades, Albert Campion and his police friends hunt a killer who seems to be reading ahead.

A Soho club owner is shot in circumstances uncannily predicted by a best‑selling detective novel written months before. As further crimes echo fiction over the next two decades, Albert Campion and his police friends hunt a killer who seems to be reading ahead.

In 1970 Albert Campion returns to Black Dudley, now part of a new university, as its official Visitor. When a charismatic professor researching mineral deposits is stabbed on campus, Campion must untangle academic politics and old scandals to find the killer.

On his seventieth birthday, Albert Campion finally tells the story of a clandestine mission that sent him into occupied France during the war. His recollection of gangsters, double agents and betrayal shows how one dangerous job shaped the rest of his life.

Playing adviser to a glamorous Italian film crew in Suffolk, Albert Campion revisits an old archaeological dig once visited by Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson. Rumours of an "Abdication treasure" still haunt the village, and someone will kill to control the legend.

An engaging history of the postwar British thriller, this book traces how writers from Ian Fleming to John le Carré reinvented spies, soldiers and adventurers between the 1950s and 1970s. Ripley blends commentary, anecdotes and reading tips into an enthusiastic guide.

When Rupert Campion is arrested while coaching rugby at a Yorkshire boys’ school, Albert heads north to clear his son’s name. In a close‑knit mining village he untangles a master’s suspicious death, ghost stories and grudges that never really faded.

Asked to discreetly watch over a Danish ambassador’s headstrong daughter and her dubious boyfriend, Albert Campion enlists his actor son Rupert. When the couple vanish and a body surfaces in a lagoon, a simple family favour becomes a murder inquiry.

This collection gathers Mike Ripley’s short crime fiction, including multiple adventures for streetwise chancer Fitzroy Maclean Angel. Thirteen stories and an unproduced TV script show him at work in pubs, backstreets and country houses, always skating close to trouble.

Albert Campion is drawn to the tightly controlled village of Lindsay Carfax, where a series of bizarre "nine days" incidents hides something far more calculated. As he probes the town’s secretive rulers, quaint traditions turn lethally dangerous.

Now settled in rural Cambridgeshire with designer Amy and their baby, Angel agrees to track down a missing scriptwriter who has vanished from a film set. The search drags him through Manchester, Yorkshire and gangland feuds that are far darker than the jokes.

This historical novel re‑imagines the life of Hereward the Wake, the guerrilla leader who defied William the Conqueror. Alternating between medieval chroniclers and vivid scenes of ambush and resistance, it explores how a troublesome fighter became enduring English legend.

Part memoir and part handbook, Surviving a Stroke follows Mike Ripley’s experience of a major stroke at fifty and the long year of recovery that followed. He mixes practical advice on rehabilitation and hypertension with the wry perspective of a crime novelist.

In this later Angel outing, a job that looks routine at first soon pulls him into the crossfire between sharp operators and far more dangerous criminals. As schemes turn violent, Angel relies on nerve, wit and sheer luck to stay one step ahead.

In Roman‑occupied Britain, Queen Boudica leads a brutal uprising against the legions while a conflicted Roman spy, Olussa, rides at her side. Caught between duty and survival, he knows the empire will drench the province in blood rather than lose to a rebel queen.

Facing impending parenthood and a move to the country, Fitzroy Maclean Angel is pushed into respectability at an all‑female detective agency. His first case, involving stolen cosmetic drugs and peculiar country‑house clients, proves anything but dull.

Dragged to a chaotic archaeological dig in Suffolk by his formidable mother, Angel swaps trowels for trouble when accidents and assaults plague the site. A hunt for Boudica’s lost royal mint masks a much more modern and deadly crime.

Angel’s quiet domestic life collapses when Amy’s secretive ex‑husband is abruptly back in prison and shady figures start sniffing around. With his wife refusing to talk, Angel’s only option is to break into jail himself, plunging into a violent, chaotic conspiracy.

Set around the rough edges of Heathrow airport, this standalone caper follows both a gang of ambitious thieves and the cops trying to catch them. A daring airport heist unfolds in parallel narratives, keeping the real scheme hidden until the final reveal.

Angel joins his fashion‑designer wife on the set of a big‑budget film at a British studio, only to realise the on‑set mishaps are calculated sabotage. Between a missing assistant, bogus insurance men and fragile egos, he has to keep both cast and crew alive.

Fresh Blood III rounds out the anthology trilogy with another batch of uncompromising short crime stories. Mixing black humour, violence and twisty plotting, it captures the restless energy of a crime scene where many contributors were only just starting out.

Posing as a brewery troubleshooter in rural Kent, Angel infiltrates rival gangs smuggling cheap beer across the Channel. Running a failing pub with fashion models drafted in as barmaids, he discovers the real danger is hidden in the cargo his bosses will kill to protect.

After signing on as an all‑purpose assistant to a trio of cutting‑edge fashion designers, Angel finds himself juggling catwalk wars, drugs and extremist thugs. When a photographer friend is murdered, he has to work out which part of the glamour business turned lethal.

Fresh Blood II continues the series’ mission to showcase up‑and‑coming British crime writers. Edgy, inventive stories explore everything from bungled robberies to moral compromises, making the book a testing ground for authors who would later build major careers.

The first Fresh Blood anthology, co‑edited by Mike Ripley, gathers original short crime stories from emerging British writers. Ranging from dark noir to sharply comic capers, it offers an energetic snapshot of new voices reshaping mystery fiction in the 1990s.

Family trouble drags Angel back to his rough roots when his wayward brother disappears into a spectacular drug deal. Using every ounce of his street sense, he tries to save his sibling without losing his marriage, his freedom or his temper.

Working as a private eye, Angel takes on an impoverished aristocrat obsessed with classic cars, a dubious religious movement and a solicitor he does not trust. Partnered with the formidable Veronica Blugden, he digs through privilege and piety to expose a very modern scam.

Flat broke, Angel juggles two jobs, one decidedly dodgy, and is pulled from London’s homeless encampments into a world of fantasy role‑playing that spills over into real violence. The city’s shadows prove much darker than any game.

Angel hits the road with a heavy‑metal band when an old friend is kidnapped over a lost truckload of illegal pills. Among roadies, gangsters and crashing cars, he races to find the missing drugs before the hostage’s time runs out.

An old university friend crashes through Angel’s skylight to his death, and the police use that shock to push Angel into infiltrating a violent animal‑rights group. The deeper he goes, the clearer it becomes that someone is planning more than protest.

Trying to help his glamorous neighbour Salome, Angel dives into the jittery world of late‑eighties high finance. Inside the London Stock Exchange, insider trading and coke‑fuelled scams prove far more dangerous than his usual illegal taxi fares and bar gigs.

Angel’s debut finds him hustling fares in a deregistered black cab and blowing jazz in Thatcher‑era London. A mysterious blonde, a vengeful cop, a gangster and a tax man turn his life into farce, with a peace camp and a stolen emerald at its chaotic heart.