Michael Innes was the pseudonym of Oxford don J.I.M. Stewart. It had been many years since I last read any of the seven of his mystery novels in my collection; I have to say that it's been rather heavy going so far.
Detective Inspector John Appleby, summoned from Scotland Yard to St. Anthony's College to investigate a Death At The President's Lodging, finds a mystery complicated by the secrets of the various members of the college. Suspects are limited to those members living in a locked compound, but that doesn't necessarily make it any easier for Appleby, even when assisted by Giles Gott, one of the dons who writes mystery novels under an assumed name. I found the plot convoluted and obscure, and none of the characters particularly interesting. Grade: C.
An amateur production of Hamlet at Scamnum, seat of the Dukes of Horton, featuring the Duke as Claudius and the Lord Chancellor of England as Polonius, is preceded by an ominous series of warnings on the theme of Hamlet, Revenge. When murder occurs during the play, Appleby is called upon by the Prime Minister to determine whether this is a private act of murderous revenge, or whether there is espionage involved. This should have been an interesting plot, but it dragged on tediously to the point where I'm still not sure what really happened or why. Grade: C.
With everyone in Britain on edge in the days leading up to WWII, Shiela Grant is traveling by train to Scotland, when a passenger in her compartment begins reciting poetry. Another passenger tops that by reciting a long poem by Algernon Swinburne, but Sheila recognizes that additional lines have been added to the poem. When she foils an attempted kidnapping, she realizes that she has stumbled into The Secret Vanguard of Nazi spies. I'm unsure how to grade this one: I give it an A for Sheila Grant and her cracking resourcefulness in escaping from and combating the spies, but a D for the clunky plot device of using obscure poetry to pass on secret information. Grade: A/D.
I started The Daffodil Affair, involving the apparent theft of a London carriage horse, but couldn't get going on it, so DNF.
In The Weight Of The Evidence, Inspector Appleby finds himself again investigating a murder among academics, this time the death of a professor who has been crushed to death by a meteorite dropped from the window of one of the university buildings. Appleby has to sort out the various academic rivalries and petty jealousies to solve the murder. Again, it's a convoluted and unlikely plot that gets a bit tedious as Appleby works his way through it. Grade: C.
Appleby, by now (1958) Sir John Appleby and the Assistant Commissioner of Crime at Scotland Yard, while vacationing in Italy, stops by to visit Lewis Packford, a retiring and secretive scholar known for springing surprises on the academic world in The Long Farewell. Realizing that Packford is about to unleash one of his bombshells, Appleby leaves him to it, only to find himself attending Packford's funeral in London shortly thereafter, and confronting Packford's two bigamous wives. Was the suicide note a forgery? What has become of the priceless Shakespeare document Packford apparently purchased in Italy? These are a few of the questions Appleby must answer to sort it all out. I'm giving this one a B, mainly because the plot is a little more coherent, but doubt I'll ever read it again. Grade: B.
It's 1962 and Appleby and his wife Judith are visiting her uncle Julius when they become involved in The Crabtree Affair. Out hiking in the neighborhood one day, they stop at the Jolly Leggers Inn, a local pub named for the "leggers" who in years past propelled barges through a long canal tunnel; there they meet elderly Seth Crabtree, a former local resident, newly returned from living in America to check out Scroop House, where he was formerly a servant. A short time later they find Crabtree's body floating in the canal, dead from a bash on the head. It's another convoluted plot, with numerous suspects congregating in the vicinity of the murder with improbable motives at the crucial time. I'm giving this on a grade of C, too, and probably going to donate the lot to the library. Grade: C.
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