Michael Innes (John Innes Mackintosh Stewart)

Annotated Book List

MICHAEL INNES (1906-1994)

Innes was a later "Golden-Age" Detective Story writer, and probably the quirkiest and most erudite. Under his real name of J.I.M. Stewart, he was a Professor of English Literature, at Oxford among other places. His principal detective was John Appleby (later Sir John) of Scotland Yard, a well-educated man of humble origins who ended up as Commissioner. Appleby was a 'new cop' -- that is, a person of intelligence, tact, and intellectual interests. Some would say too much as he can be very obscure and obfuscatory. The characters in these books spout off erudite quotations and allusions to poems that even English majors in America would know only in that they might have heard of the author (of course, kids do that sort of thing now with rock music songs and phrases); no doubt this is due to the obsolescent British form of education that emphasizes memorization. That is what makes these mysteries so entertaining, but only if you can stand that sort of thing. The plots tend to be convoluted, low-keyed but fantastic at the same time; a characteristic device for covering up the solution is to have the suspects speak so allusively as not to make much sense -- they are always hiding some guilty knowledge even if they are not the true villains. However, the situations are often so imaginative and both witty and funny that the stories become addictive.

A comment on John Appleby's career. Like Sherlock Holmes and unlike Hercule Poirot, the detective not only ages but has a developing private life that is alluded to throughout -- but not always consistently. The biggest mystery about Appleby is how, having taken early retirement as an Inspector, he is not only a knight but an Assistant Commissioner not more than five years later. His family and background is sporadically mentioned (an aunt, his humble rural upbringing, a 'radical' youth stage, his time on the beat as a constable, his education -- whether at Oxford or St Anthony's is confusing). Appleby apparently has a love affair with a married woman in Ararat. His wife, his sister, his son all play prominent roles in one book or another. There are also many recurring characters (and back-references to prior adventures), such as the Duke of Horton and Scamnum Court, although Appleby has no single Watson or Lewis. His personality and appearance must mostly be generated in the reader's mind, since he is often a reflective surface via which the mystery is conveyed.

"Mr. Innes is the most adeptly and allusively elephantine wit presently committed to the English language." -- New York Herald Tribune

"The initial crime is like to be a matter of simple passion such as we can all without difficulty understand; the further crimes elaborated from it tend to the extravagance and fantasy -- as also the ingenuity -- of dreams. From all this there emerges a good working rule. Find the simplicities of the case -- those elements in it which make simple sense in terms of the elementary human passions. Take this as a centre and dispose everything else as best you can round about it. Don't be seduced into taking as a centre any of the secondary elaboration, however obtrusive and startling it may appear." -- Sir John Appleby, A Night of Errors

Book List
(Original British Titles in Parentheses)

• SEVEN SUSPECTS (Death at the President's Lodging) (1936) * --
  Murder at a pseudo-Oxbridge college; very complicated plot with the eccentric dons involved in different aspects of the case and covering up. Minute-by-minute alibi timetables are the thing here. Nice debut. Introduces Appleby's don-cum-mystery writer friend Giles Gott. (My original title page comment: "Academic dodos in their forest.")

• HAMLET, REVENGE! (1937) *** --
  Excellent murder story, of the Lord Chancellor no less, set in a huge Blenheim-Palace-like country house during a grand production of Hamlet in the great hall. Giles Gott appears again, as director of the play, and the cast has many upper-upper-crust characters. A spy element, but basically a good mystery. The Hamlet stuff is very good, as is Lady Elizabeth's method of hiding from the killer. The killer is also a fascinating study, and the misdirection by the author that also contains the solution. Gott, of course, comes up with a logically ingenious explanation that turns out to be completely wrong.

• LAMENT FOR A MAKER (1938) *** --
  (Alternative title: The Learned Rats)
  A masterpiece of the 'Scotch' ilk (lairds, castles, and Highland villagers), told in the form of narratives and journals by various participants. Involves a lost heir, guilt-driven madness, and revenge. Superbly written with the narrators providing their own personalities by voice (especially Ewan Bell, the learned sutor/cobbler). The plot, as with most Innes's, is absurd, but it is the telling that counts. In addition, there are some beautifully descriptive passages about the Highlands in winter. One of the best mysteries of all time. But an atmospheric flaw: That impossibly Peter-Wimsey-ish Gylby English git who can quote Dunbar out of his head without reading a book -- Innes's quotation habits of his 'smart' people are really out of hand. The stodgy prose of the Edinburgh lawyers, etc. one can brook, but not these idiotic Bartlett's quotation characters that Innes habitually puts forth as the only intelligent people in the world. Gylby recognizes a quote from Coleridge's "Christobel" when the equally brainy American girl comes out with it and then feels ashamed when he comes back with the "Childe Roland to the dark tower came" phrase because he thinks it is trivial and unworthy -- whereas, in my opinion that is the best thing that could have been said under those circumstances. (Some characters from Hamlet, Revenge! reappear.)

  (My favorite, so I saved the reread for the last, apart from From London Far, Old Hall,, and Money from Holme, which I have read but don't have available for rereading, and apparently aren't major Innes anyway. -- GS)

• STOP PRESS (1939) --
  Much ado about nothing, or a very long shaggy dog story. A series of set pieces with nice buildups and descriptions, ending up with anticlimaxes, over and over again for 400 pages. Appleby does absolutely nothing except make obscure comments ("I know the method but not the motive"). There is a particularly revolting romance between Appleby's sister and a callow undergraduate of Oxford, a naive male-chauvenist pretentious ass if there ever was one, and that doesn't improve matters. This is Innes's Gaudy Night. Pooh.

  (This was the only Innes I was never able to obtain in the past, but got it from House of Stratus -- who did very bad proofreading on this -- via Amazon.co.uk for Xmas 2001. Having slogged through it, I am not suprised that it has seldom been reprinted. -- GS)

• A COMEDY OF TERRORS (There Came Both Mist and Snow) (1940) --
  A light country-house shooting plot, with all the eccentrics coming up with theories blaming each other (vaguely reminiscent of Berkeley's Poisoned Chocolates Case). The brewer Cudbird is an amusing character, as is the first-person narrator. Clever, but disappointing, solution.This is the first of the Innes books that he just cloned over and over again: odd folks in a decayed, or not so decaying but threatened, fancy house in unspecified rural England.

• THE SECRET VANGUARD (1941) --
  A spy novel, some nonsense about a secret formula. The book is a pastiche of Buchan's classic suspense-pursuit novel The 39 Steps, and is well done in that sub-sub-genre -- including all the improbable coincidental encounters in the remote Scottish Highlands. Not to be taken at all seriously.

• APPLEBY ON ARARAT (1941) --
  While returning to England from Australia during the early part of the War, Appleby and five other people end up in the 'sky-light bar' floating upside-down in the Pacific after their ocean liner is torpedoed, and are eventually stranded on a desert island. One of them is murdered, making this, technically, a trapped-in-a-country-house type mystery. Sheer fantasy, with some spy elements thrown in. Comes in four movements and a long coda: Adrift at Sea (Allegro), Stranded a là Swiss Family Robinson (Andante), Finding the Resort Hotel over the Unexplored East Ridge (Scherzo) -- now quick segue into a more typically Innes theme, and a lot less entertaining than the first three movements (Andante sustenento), taking place in this weird resort for health nuts and escapees, followed by the violent Rondo to wrap it all up in context of the War (spies, Nazis, etc.). An amusing but silly book. A precursor, in a way, of Peter Dickinson's earlier books. This would have worked better as a non-Appleby, since the Inspector doesn't really fit well here.

• THE DAFFODIL AFFAIR (1942) * --
  What do the following have in common? A stolen half-witted carriage horse. A kidnapped girl with multiple-personality disorder. An absconding genuine witch. A purloined haunted house. Another Innesian fantasy, similar to but better than Ararat, with a Jurassic Park/Dr No type of setup in the South American Pampas. Lucy Rideout, the split-personality girl, is particularly well drawn, as is the villain Mr Wine.
  
  
     "We're in a sort of hodge-podge of fantasy and harum-scarum adventure that isn't a proper detective story at all. We might be by Michael Innes."
     "Innes? I've never heard of him." Appleby spoke with decided exasperation.

• THE WEIGHT OF THE EVIDENCE (1943) * --
  Professor at a provincial English university is murdered by having a meteorite dropped on him from a tower. There are some good bizarre Dickensian scenes such as Innes specialized in: e.g., Mrs Dearlove's incredibly noisy boarding house, Lord Nesfield's gigantic mansion, and Professor Prisk's philological musings on words such as acritochromancy, acroasis, acronyctous, and acrocomic (long-haired), and as usual every suspect was up to something if not murder. Some good political comment about the dog-kennel idealism of Socialists (a prediction of suburbia and fast food and Thatcherism even) and the coming fate of nobles and eccentrics. But the crime and its solution is rather ridiculous.

• APPLEBY'S END (1945) ** --
  Appleby's End is the name of a train station in Cold Comfort Farm territory (the local villages are Yatter, Sneak, Snarl, Drool, Boxer's Bottom, and Linger). Lots of rural inbreeding, pig rustling, and strange people. A quintessential Innes, and Appleby meets his future wife Judith Raven in this. Nice bit about floating down the river in a carriage, in a snowstorm, and huddling in a haystack. Fantastic events but a nice change from some of the previous bizarre fantasies. Back on track again at the end of the War. Interesting story too, but not really a murder mystery per se. The motive for the crimes is excellent. (Hints that Appleby is going to retire from the police and become a farmer -- indeed, next couple of books don't have him -- but Innes later changed his mind.)

• FROM LONDON FAR (1946) * -- (non-Appleby story)
  An elderly scholar inadvertently says a password in a tobacconist shop and plunges into a conspiracy involving post-war art theft on a huge scale, set in London, the Scottish Highlands, and California. One of Innes's phantasmagorias, absurd and great fun, although the language is more stilted than ever. Each part has an excellent Innesian set-piece: a warehouse for art thieves in London, a ruinous castle on a Hebridean island, and a Hearst-like millionaire's house somewhere in the US. In each case there are some very bizarre touches.

  (Misplaced my copy of this. Something to do with art, and, I think, a non-Appleby. But: Jan 2004, House of Stratus to the rescue! -- G.S.)

• WHAT HAPPENED AT HAZELWOOD (1946) ** -- (non-Appleby story)
  This is a classic country-house murder in structure, even down to the final confrontation in the study/library where the detective explains everybody's guilty secrets. One difference is the nastiness of the extensive Simney family (mostly) -- not a nice bunch although eccentric enough. Who the murderer is turns out to be a nice variation of least-likely-person. The detective is Inspector Cadover, a parody of the omniscient sleuth, and there are passing references to Appleby. Story is told by two first-person narrators, adding some interesting perspectives on the same situation. One of Innes's best novels (but one misses Appleby). Note the 'naked deception', reminiscent of the one in Hamlet, Revenge, but even better.

• A NIGHT OF ERRORS (1947) * --
  Appleby has, in fact, taken early retirement after his marriage*, and he has bought the yellow Bentley from the Yard in which he made his first appearance. In this case he is brought in as consultant to his friend, a local Inspector. The story is laid out in the manner of a classical play, with all the action, no matter how complicated its roots, taking place in a single night, and although melodramatic has its inspiration in Restoration comedy. Involves triplets, lost heirs, bigamy, arson, multiple murders, and peripatetic corpses. What happens to the butler, Swindle, is a comic variation on Dickens's Quilp scenario. Fun, but far-fetched.

  * How he eventually ends up as Chief Commissioner is yet to be explained: A retired Inspector (no more, not even Superintendent) becomes Chief Commissioner not ten years later!

• THE CASE OF THE JOURNEYING BOY (The Journeying Boy) (1949) ** -- (non-Appleby story)
  Inspector Cadover returns. A thriller involving attempts at kidnapping by two rival gangs. Beautifully done, if overlong and very wordy in parts; also a lot of the Ireland portion of the story is caricature. There are two interweaving threads to the story: the adventures of the boy and his tutor, and the investigation of the murder of the previous tutor. The adventures are prime Innes (especially the train scenes where most of the passengers are the cast of a circus). The investigation is far more interesting; Cadover is much more of a procedural cop than Appleby ever was, and he does a great job. More passing references to Appleby, whom the author seems determined to have retired -- but he is back in the next book.

• THE PAPER THUNDERBOLT (Operation Pax) (1951) *** --
  A combination of chase novel, spy thriller, and academic mystery (all author specialities). Wonderful backdrop provided by the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The chapter epigraphs are all from Milton, appropriately, as the villainous conspiracy is based in the village of Milton Porcorum and is Satanic in many senses. Nice involvement of parallel plots and coteries of characters: the sleazy but sympathetic little crook Routh, who starts this thing off, Appleby, his sister, middle European refugees, some eccentric dons (e.g., Dr Bultitude), and a troop of schoolboys; a really nasty villain called Squire, ubiquitous pursuers, and a very high-level scientific conspiracy against the human race. Like most of the author's stories, the events occur in a very short time frame. This is one of Innes's best books. [PS: Appleby has a much younger sister, Jane, who is an Oxford undergraduate -- first we ever heard of this! -- and plays a prominent role in this book. Note: Barzun and Taylor didn't like this book but to hell with them.]

• ONE MAN SHOW (A Private View) (1952) ** --
  Art snobbery par excellence, one of Innes's specialties ("A determined effort to disintegrate reality in the interest of the syncretic principle"); also rival gangs of sleazy crooks. Art theft and forgery. Nicely satirical -- cf. Freeman's Stoneware Monkey. Our old friend, the Duke of Horton (from Hamlet, Revenge) is back. Judith Appleby does some sleuthing on her own. This is a very funny story, including the bizarre accent of the art dealer Hildebert Braunkopf, who henceforth appears in other Inneses as too good to be a one-off character. [PS: Appleby is now Assistant Commissioner, however he got there without going up through the ranks. Maybe his erudition was just too awesome for his superiors, but I doubt it. Must have been influence from Duke of Horton or somebody who went to school with the Home Secretary.]

• CANDLESHOE (Christmas at Candleshoe) (1953) -- (non-Appleby story made into a Walt Disney movie with Jodie Foster!)
  A mouldering old manor house under siege by a gang of art thieves. The garrison is a couple of doddering old folk, an American mother and son visiting serendipitously, and a group of adventurous kids. Innes, too, again plays up the sad plight of impoverished country gentry under a socialist government. Fun, quick read. (By the way, there is no role in this book for the young Jodie Foster, so Disney obviously messed around with the plot.)

• APPLEBY TALKING (1954) * -- (Short Stories)
  Very short for the most part; good bathroom reading. The Vicar, The Doctor, The Q.C. -- they are Appleby's audience over the port after dinner or a pint at the local. A lot of these literally turn out to be tall tales, and are usually wound up with a nice pun (such as the clue of the typewriter ribbon -- "It made an impression on me"). There is something very comfortable about fireside stories of this sort told by a good raconteur. There are also a couple of straightforward short stories in the third person, such as the very fine "Dead Man's Shoes," a spy tale.

• THE MAN FROM THE SEA (1955) --(non-Appleby story)
  One of Innes's specialities: the suspense-pursuit novel (Scottish moors etc.) Starts well with some interesting characters, especially the fugitive, who is a defected scientist defecting back. This defector, John Day, is one of the best characters Innes ever created. Great story, until about three-quarters through, then degenerates into bland and sloppy melodrama. This had the potential of being a classic spy novel, but no dice.

• OLD HALL, NEW HALL (1956) -- (non-Appleby story)
  This is quite a good example of Innes in his whimsical mode (no murder, no Appleby) involving youthful acadamics of a very intelligent but naive sort, designing women of their age who can walk all over them, lost art treasures, peculiar American professors, country houses and eccentric squirarchy, and that sort of stuff. The American 'professor' (Milton Milder), who is extremely boring and pontifical, turns out to be a crook. There are three interpolated letters, taking up much of the book, that are marvellous pastiches of the sort of letter a Janeite character might have written to her ex-governess in early Victorian times about the odd behavior of her brothers over a bet -- what would be the better prize to be 'stolen' from the inferior folks of Greece or the Caucasus, all shades of Lord Elgin. These make the book worth reading, even if it's not a detective story.

  (Read a long time ago but now missing from my collection -- but which House of Stratus finally sent to me after ordering it over six month ago. -- GS)

• DEATH ON A QUIET DAY (Appleby Plays Chicken) (1956) --
  A chase story: a witness to a murder, having to be eliminated, is pursued on Dartmoor. Involves a gaggle of idiotically impulsive undergraduates on a reading tour (the author was a professor so has more tolerance for callow youth than I do). Interesting that most of them had already done their National Service (England still had a draft then) before becoming students, but oddly still have no expertise about sex or dealing with women (what on earth is this thingie for and how does one use it?) -- this is pre-sixties, however.

• APPLEBY TALKS AGAIN (1956) * -- (Short Stories)
  Anecdotal but amusing -- the right stuff like a Drambuie after dinner (not more than one or two a day, though). Many of the stories in this book turn on the gimmick of Sir John's personal 'Black Museum' ("I was telling you this was a very odd case, so please to inspect this jewel case.") Some of our old favorites reappear -- Braunkopf the 'puttickler' art dealer, Lady Scattergood, Nesfield University... There are a few great stories here, such as "A Matter of Goblins" and "Grey's Ghost."

• THE LONG FAREWELL (1958) * --
  A good one: murder faked as suicide, bigamy, Shakespearean manuscript forgery, and a cast of eccentric literary scholars and collectors. Much more accessible in style than many of Innes's books. Victim, himself, is a finely drawn character; one is sorry to see him depart so early in the book. The murderer's motive and behavior, however, is not very plausible.

• HARE SITTING UP (1959) --
  Strictly a thriller rather than a mystery -- very well done (except for the melodramatically swift ending). Innes is very serious in his moralizing about modern society, especially the idiocy of military research and development. A top bacterial-warfare scientist goes missing, possibly with a vial of some unspecified super-virulent disease toxin; Appleby leads the chase at the request of the Prime Minister... (But one, well this one, really prefers a mystery to a thriller.)

• THE CASE OF SONIA WAYWARD (The New Sonia Wayward) (1960) *** -- (non-Appleby story)
  Sonia Wayward, a romance novelist, drops dead on her yacht; Colonel Petticate, her husband, slips the body overboard and determines to cover up and write additional Wayward novels himself. Of course, he finds himself getting deeper and deeper into the cesspool -- including a pair of nasty blackmailing servants. Wonderful biter-bit sort of plot and one of Innes's masterpieces.

• SILENCE OBSERVED (1961) --
  Nice vintage Appleby, not excessively erudite. A favorite Innes theme: forgery (literature and art), in this case including a forgery of a famous forger's work of a poem by Meredith. Collectors shown up as greedy and close-mouthed (hence the title, based on the sign in a Club library). A straightforward but clever swindle conspiracy. Two ruthless murders, but easy to solve as there are few suspects (except the whole rest of the world if you ignore the detective story rule that all the suspects must be portrayed).

• THE CRABTREE AFFAIR (A Connoisseur's Case) (1962) --
  In these 'middle' books, Appleby as Commissioner is too exalted an administrator to take part in official detection, so his involvement has to be by accident or a personal connection. In this case, he and his wife are on vacation and encounter a corpse in a derelict canal lock. This is a nice village cosy with a lot of good red herrings and an ingenious scam behind as motive for the murder. Not overwhelmingly erudite dialogue either.

• MONEY FROM HOLME (1964) * -- (non-Appleby story)
  Mervyn Cheel, the central character, is a failed artist now an art critic for a provincial newspaper. He is mercenary and amoral, unscrupulous and catty. Also a cheapskate. The plot becomes a matter of who is scamming whom and what deviousness in the art of blackmail is required. Our old friend Braunkopf ('the voonderble vorlt of art') is back again as an ancillary character. A non-Appleby story from Innes. Very amusing, although not really a mystery novel.

  (Had misplaced my copy of the book at the time of compiling this page, but recently re-acquired from House of Stratus. -- G.S.)

• THE BLOODY WOOD (1964) * --
  A beautiful and sad book with a nice clean plot and only a few Innesian diversions of his usual sort. The murder of a woman dying of cancer and the supposed suicide of her husband set up to look like remorse for mercy killing. The story takes a long time to end up with murder, but that is for the purpose of setting up the wonderful relationship between the two victims during this awful period. Also a movement with the times for this author: drugs and teenage pregnancy. However, Appleby allows the murderer to kill himself, as so often happens in Golden Age mysteries -- probably authors had reasonable doubts then about the justice of judicial hanging. What somebody does with a tape recorder here is very moving (though not what the murderer did with it). Excellent story.

• A CHANGE OF HEIR (1966) -- (non-Appleby story)
  This is an imposture story of the Patricia Highsmith classic The Talented Mr Ripley type (except that the 'impostee' is the Ripley character), but no way as grim in its undertones. More like an undergraduate prank and even the expected blackmailers are not that sinister. There is a murder plot, however, so there is a good (but expected) comeuppance at the end. Switching of identities is an Innes specialty -- his main characters are always intelligent but feckless, or intelligent but corrupt, and the stories revolve around that confusion -- but this one is not his best.

• DEATH BY WATER (Appleby at Allington) (1968) --
  Back to the scene of Appleby's End, Judith's milieu near Linger. A rather boring country house murder mystery -- three killings but still nothing much really happens dramatically, son et lumière and a village fête notwithstanding. Some amusing character studies, like the appalling golf and tennis fathers and the heterodox vicar; otherwise, a disappointment. There seem to be a lot of big country houses in this neighborhood -- several books were set in the area (apparently Gloucestershire).

• PICTURE OF GUILT (A Family Affair) (1969) --
  Art fraud and Braunkopf again. Appleby, now retired [again], Judith, his wife, and Bobby, his son, all take part in this investigation of art crimes arranged to look like practical jokes. Not very interesting to readers who couldn't care less about painters. Middling Innes.

• DEATH AT THE CHASE (1970) --
  It is never really specified where Long Dream Manor (Appleby's estate) is located in England -- probably Gloucestershire -- but wherever it is is the most heavily populated by grand manor houses environment on the island. This is yet another country-house murder case, with repeat characters Bobby Appleby and Chief Constable Tommy Pride. The story is about the murder of a rich and ancient miser, with a bevy of quarrelsome and mutually hating relatives, and is a lot of fun to read in a Wodehouse way. But not much of a mystery (more like an expanded short-story gimmick).

• AN AWKWARD LIE (1971) -- (Applebys but more son than father)
  Bobby encounters a body in a sand trap on the golf course early in the morning and recognizes it as his old school Latin master. Unfortunately, by the time he can get the police there, the body has disappeared -- so he goes off to investigate on his own. Amusing and diverting (is divertissement the word?). Very funny in parts, as when he goes back to check out his old school. Turns out to be a spy novel and therefore not a mystery in the sense that the identity of the murderer matters.

• THE OPEN HOUSE (1972) --
  Appleby's car breaks down at midnight in the middle of nowhere and on foot he blunders into a huge Palladian manor house, all lit up but seemingly empty. A typical bit of Innes syntax: "Unauthorized nocturnal intrusion within the purlieus of this august habitation automatically produced not a ringing of bells or the like, but a deluge of light calculated to appal and repel even the most temerarious burglar." Like many Innes mysteries, everything is resolved within a very short space of time. This involves the return (and murder) of a prodigal heir, gangs of South Americans, burglars, sinister butlers, and dotty old uncles. A pleasant jumble.

• APPLEBY'S ANSWER (1973) --
  A village cosy (nice change from the 'voonderble vorldt of art'). The elderly mystery writer Priscilla Pringle -- Poison at the Parsonage, etc. -- gets involved in a real murder plot. The characters (local gentry, central figures, etc.) are more unappealing than usual in a cosy. Amusing book, but not much more than an expanded short story.

• APPLEBY'S OTHER STORY (1974) --
  Another huge country house in Appleby's neighborhood, and a murder by shooting. Colonel Pride, the local Chief Constable, makes yet another appearance having become a regular in these stories of Appleby after his retirement. The book strictly follows the classic country-house formula, right down to the final revelation where all the suspects are gathered together and their secrets expounded. The mechanism of the crime is very ingenious (in fact it could only be pulled off in such a huge and cluttered place as this mansion), but the characters are all unpleasant rather than amusingly eccentric. Disappoints.

• THE MYSTERIOUS COMMISSION (1974) -- (Charles Honeybath, R.A.)
  Honeybath is Innes's 'second detective' (in four books, anyway). He is a prominent Royal Academy portrait painter and also a great fan of Sherlock Holmes (unlike Appleby). Here he gets into a typical Innes thriller situation when he is commissioned, and thus got out of the way, to paint a senile gang leader while a rival gang uses his studio cellar as a site to tunnel into a nearby bank vault. Not bad, but not really a mystery story. Innes likes to have cultivated middle-aged heroes get into hot water and display unexpected spunkiness.

• THE APPLEBY FILE (1975) * -- (Short Stories)
  Another nice collection. Many of the shorter stories are neat little exercises leading up to a punnish closing line, others reiterate constant Innes themes (impersonation, suicide-disguised-as-crime, financiers and dotty squires, art fraud). At least one, however, is a classic Innes and should be anthologized -- "The Ascham" -- it epitomizes this author in a few pages, has most elements of everything Innes wrote, in a truncated way -- A-plus.

• THE GAY PHOENIX (1976) * --
  A man impersonates his brother, who has died in a boat accident. This situation is an Innes specialty, and well done here. The deception becomes more and more complicated, with blackmail, shady financiers, etc. The crooked butler Bread (aka Butter) is a well-drawn character. Most this takes place in the environs of Dream, hence the retired and curious Appleby's involvement. ('Gay' did not have its present connotation then, or at least not to Innes. Here, it is the name of a boat.)

• HONEYBATH'S HAVEN (1977) * -- (Charles Honeybath, R.A.)
  This is oh-so-genteely written (Innes's prose is actually very basic English except for the irruptions of Latinate nouns and adjectives and gratuitous quotations, but it does come across as very pedantic with its careful grammar and apologies for 'slang' terms that are in common usage). The story is very good, however, its theme of long-term but only intermittently close friendship and the tribulations of senescent madness, loyalty, and how to deal with the situation being presented very movingly. This involves a sinister nursing home for the rich and dotty and is well done. Honeybath comes across as a really good, and perceptive, person even if he is a bit of a prig.

• THE AMPERSAND PAPERS (1978) --
  Another country house (actually a Cornish castle). One gets a bit sated by these stories having read them all in serially in a couple of months. Involves valuable papers about the Romantic poets (Shelley, Byron, etc.). Why is it that such things always end up destroyed in books of this sort? Maybe because we never know about them as fact, hence something like the disclaimer that 'all characters are imaginary'. Rather a bore, this mystery that isn't really one, although the castle setting is good.

• GOING IT ALONE (1980) -- (non-Appleby story)
  A straightforward thriller, with an elderly man involved in his nephew's encounter with a gang of bank robbers (and his nephew's upper-class but politically involved squatter friends). Pleasant read, but not a mystery.

• LORD MULLION'S SECRET (1981) -- (Charles Honeybath, R.A.)
  This is not a murder mystery, it is a romance (daughter of the lord of the manor and the gardener's boy, whose ancestry is a matter of old secrets). Nicely told story, but it doesn't really belong on a mystery site.

• SHEIKS AND ADDERS (1982) --
  High adventures at a country-house fête near Dream. Villains (burglarous druids, Arab terrorists, a gang of boy scouts, several sheiks only one of whom is real, and escape by hot-air balloon). Middling Innes of his whimsical sort.

• APPLEBY AND HONEYBATH (1983) --
  Charles Honeybath and John Appleby, Innes's two main detectives, 'work' together in this case, involving a Body in the Library. It involves both watercolors by the painter Claude and an unknown satirical poem by Alexander Pope, a party of country-houseguests all up to nasty no-good in a cultured way. Too bad, as usual, that the treasures are both lost, especially that the awful Mrs Mustard gets away with her theft of the paintings. But on the other hand, Squire Grinton, a fox-hunting intentional illiterate, is not somebody the reader sympathizes with for his loss. Some clever 'contemporary' diary and book entries provided by Innes, so this is a pretty good book -- yet disappointing. No murder (the corpse died of a heart attack while laughing at the Pope MS), but plenty of cover-ups.

• CARSON'S CONSPIRACY (1984) --
  Carson, a higher-level businessman, is in financial trouble, so he arranges the kidnapping and ransom of a non-existent son (to liquidate his cash in order to flee to Brazil). Appleby gets involved (this takes place, again, in the neighborhood of Long Dream Manor), and this time he screws up, saying at the end to Tommy Pride: "Mycroft is retired." One can say that Sir John has been creaking at the joints for the last few books. Still, it's a good plot and has a nice surprise ending.

• APPLEBY AND THE OSPREYS (1986) * --
  Swan Song, or one should say Bat Song (as bats figure prominently in this one). Yet another, and final, huge country house inhabited by eccentrics in Appleby's neighborhood. (This one involves a valuable coin collection and a throat-cutting.) As Judith says:
  "You do hanker, John -- don't you? And it isn't for your final eminence as top bobby in London. It's for the position of the promising young man in the CID."
  "That's deplorably obvious, I'd say."
  "And it's why, every now and then, you still run into mysteries accidentally on purpose."
  Too bad he never did it again.... (It gets a star as being the last.)

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Grammar and Wordology. Maybe this doesn't belong on this page, but I have a quibble with British writers whose characters are always apologizing for bad grammar when saying "It's me" or "That's him". In standard English usage (as opposed to strict Victorian grammar), the verb 'to be' is sometimes used in a transitive form thus taking the accusative case. It is definitely unidiomatic to say "It is I" or "That is he". That's just the way the language is and it is pedantic to call it bad grammar. (On the other hand, I abominate the more and more common usage of phrases like "between you and I" because "I" is the object of "between" and therefore should be "me" -- this misusage of the language is similar to that of calling an undertaker (itself a euphemism for gravedigger) a mortician or a garbageman a sanitary engineer, some misguided effort to sound more proper or genteel.) Innes, unfortunately, has Appleby apologizing for his 'bad grammar' in such cases as "It's him", and that is just unnecessary pedanticism. Innes is very punctilious about distinguishing his usage of 'subterranean' and 'subterraneous' as applied to caverns and cellars, and that's fine in his sort of book, but please don't carry this to extremes! [On the other hand, one of my favorite scenes among the great detectives is Nero Wolfe systematically tearing out and burning the pages of the new Webster's Dictionary.]

We don't all have the advantage of a multilingual education, so the untranslated French, Latin, and German quotations are irritating (I recall just barely passing my college French exam by translating something as 'he had holes in his arm', literally, when the idiom referred to a clerk whose shirt sleeves were worn down at the elbow). One shouldn't as an author expect most readers to recognize nuances like this.

Page created November 2001