Does this map look awfully familiar? Murderers, spies and other dastardly deeds in Suffolk

The real town of Orford, with its shingle ness, lends its geography to a fictional new mystery featuring detective Albert Campion. There’s a bit of Southwold’s DNA there, too. The aristocratic but unassuming policeman was the creation of Margery Allingham, one of Britain’s Queens of Crime, who from the mid-1930s lived at Tolleshunt D’Arcy, near Tiptree.

Albert Campion first appeared in print in 1929 and featured in 21 novels, dozens of short stories and a BBC TV series starring Peter Davison.

The series, part of the “golden age” of English crime-writing, continued into the 1960s. It might easily have stopped there, following her death in Colchester in 1966. However, husband Philip “Pip” Youngman Carter took over what we’d nowadays call “the franchise”.

He had long helped his wife with the Campion stories. He finished the one she was working on – Cargo of Eagles – and most readers were unable to spot the join.

On he went, writing Mr Campion’s Farthing and Mr Campion’s Falcon before himself expiring in 1969, of lung cancer – but not before writing the first four chapters of the intended next instalment.

And – again – there the series might have stopped. But crimewriter Mike Ripley is a big Allingham fan and completed Youngman Carter’s unfinished story. It featured a made-up Suffolk wool town called Lindsay Carfax, which had more than a passing resemblance to Lavenham, and was published last year as Mr Campion’s Farewell.

But it was more of an au revoir than an actual goodbye. The detective is back, in his first totally-new outing for 45 years – this one written by Mike from the first word to the last.

He confirms: “Mr Campion’s Fox uses all the famous characters created by Margery Allingham, but this is a completely new story – unlike Mr Campion’s Farewell, where I was working from the bare bones of a novel left by Margery’s husband and collaborator.

“It means, of course, that I’ve got no-one else to blame if readers don’t like it!”

Youngman Carter’s unfinished novel was left to the Margery Allingham Society, which allowed Mike to complete it and has given its blessing to the new book, too.

Many of Campion’s adventures took place in East Anglia and in Mr Campion’s Fox the action is set in the fictional Suffolk coastal town of Gapton. In keeping with the traditions of “Golden Age” detective stories from the 1930s, the book comes with a map, designed by Allingham fan Roger Johnson, of Chelmsford.

“I have taken numerous liberties with the beautiful Suffolk coast, which I fell in love with 40 years ago, and it was clearly an area Margery Allingham felt a deep affection for,” says Mike, who lives near Colchester and calls the detective “dangerously vague and self-effacing”.

“The book is set in 1969, during the Cold War, and the wilder parts of the coast seemed ideal for a tale involving spies, smugglers, a murder and the hunt for a missing girl.”

The Danish ambassador has requested Campion’s help with “a delicate family matter”. His 18-year-old daughter has formed an attachment to a most unsuitable young man. Before Campion can act, the daughter and her beau disappear without trace. Then a body is discovered in a lagoon.

Will this be the detective’s final bow? No. Mike’s working on a third Campion, due out next year. There’s no rest for the gentleman sleuth when so many ne’er-do-wells abound.

• Mr Campion’s Fox is published by Severn House at £19.99

Mike, the man

• Mike Ripley’s from Yorkshire

• Was a journalist there

• He’s been in north-east Essex since 1975

• Worked as a press officer at the University of Essex

• In the 1980s, commuted to London for job at The Brewers Society

• First book, Just Another Angel, launched long series featuring jazz trumpeter-cum-dodgy-minicab-driver Fitzroy Maclean Angel

• Has written 20 novels, including Boudica, The Lost Roman

• Has twice won the Crime Writers’ Association Last Laugh Award

• A collection of short stories, Angels and Others, is out later this year