Sir John Appleby

Review: There Came Both Mist and Snow

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Cover image of "There Came Both mist and Snow" by Michael Innes

There Came Both Snow and Mist

There Came Both Snow and Mist (Sir John Appleby Number 6), Michael Innes. Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781504092074) 2024 (first published in 1940).

Summary: A gathering of Sir Basil Roper’s extended family and friends is marred when his nephew is shot in his study.

Arthur Ferryman has always loved Belrive, the home of Sir Basil Roper, especially the old priory ruins. So, you can understand his delight on being invited for a holiday gathering with extended family. But city is encroaching on country as Ferryman notes, watching the Cudbury Brewery neon sign pour tall cold ones over the priory ruins. Ah, progress!

Likewise, this is not an idyllic family gathering. Sir Basil has announced plans to sell his estate to fund a science expedition. Not everyone is happy, particularly those who could lose inheritances. Furthermore, a new pastime introduces a new element of danger–pistol shooting!

Yes, you guessed it. There is a shooting. Arthur, unsettled by the family dynamics, goes for an evening walk before dinner. At one point, he notices a figure on the terrace outside Sir Basil’s study. Not able to identify the person and not thinking too much of it, he continues his walk as snow begins to fall. As he is returning for dinner, he meets another person at the door, who is none other than Sir John Appleby, a family friend and dinner guest.

When they go in, they learn there has been a shooting in Sir Basil’s study. At first, because he was in there earlier, they feared it was Sir Basil. Instead, it is a nephew, seriously wounded in the right lung. He’s hanging on by a thread as an ambulance rushes him away.

Appleby is asked to join the local police to assist. Appleby more or less invites Ferryman to be his right hand man. Convenient, since Ferryman is our narrator! Typical of manor house mysteries, while Appleby investigates, the family all come up with theories, accusing most everyone in the house. There is even a confession. One of the family is even a would-be mystery writer with her own theories.

There is also some question of who was the intended victim. Everyone notes the family resemblance between Sir Basil and the nephew, as well as the nephew’s brother. This helps account for the variety of theories. In the midst of all that, and a house full of guns, Appleby has to find the shooter while we wait on tenterhooks to see if the victim will survive.

Not everyone appreciates Innes. I would describe his books as mysteries for the cultured, for those who like sophisticated dialogue and dry British humor. And he wrote in the 1930’s and 1940’s, a different time. But I enjoyed the plot development, the cast of characters, and how Innes employs Ferryman as narrator.

Review: The Open House

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Cover image of "The Open House" by Michael Innes

The Open House (Sir John Appleby, 26) Michael Innes. Penguin (ISBN: 0140036636) 1972 (out of print, link is to used copies available at ABE Books).

Summary: When his car breaks down, Sir John Appleby walks up a drive. The mansion at the end is suddenly lit with its front door open.

Years ago a friend recommended the mystery novels of Michael Innes. Witty and well-written, I’ve enjoyed them whenever I come across copies, especially in the green-spined Penguin editions. Sadly, the books are out of print. But I found three of them on my trip to John King’s Books recently.

Innes’ detective is Sir john Appleby, the “Sir” coming with his appointment as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Innes develops this character over 50 years from a young Detective Inspector to his eminent position, publishing Appleby novels between 1936 and 1986.

In this story, Sir John is driving down a country road at night when he suddenly discovers his gear shift lever isn’t attached to anything. All he can do is park the car and find assistance. This was before the day of cell phones. He sets foot, trying to find a local inn he thinks is up the road. He turns off a drive that he thinks leads up to it. Everything is dark. Then suddenly it isn’t. Almost like magic, a great country mansion has appeared before him. And when he looks, the front door is open.

Being a proper gentleman, he rings the bell, but no one comes. When he ventures in, he finds no one. But a place is laid for dinner in the dining room. In the main bedroom, pajamas are laid out and a hot water bottle provided to warm the bed. He wanders into the library and figures out this is the house of Adrian Snodgrass, who has made his fortune in South America. Another Snodgrass interrupts him. This is Professor Beddoes Snodgrass, a somewhat daft caretaker whose main job is to open the house up once a year for the arrival of its owner. But he hasn’t turned up for many years. But others from the neighborhood have. As a policeman, Appleby doesn’t approve. But he enjoys a glass of port with the Professor as he recounts the history of the family and the house.

Appleby hears various sounds outside the library, and on going out to search trips over Rev. Absalon, who has dropped by for the open house. There is an appearance of a lady in white, then Leonidas, the recently hired butler who announces that Adrian Snodgrass has arrived. Professor Snodgrass leaves Leonidas to attend to him. Suddenly there is a commotion, a scream, and a fired shot. Appleby finds Adrian Snodgrass has arrived — dead of a gunshot wound. A valuable painting is missing, and worse — people of South American appearance are still rummaging about the house.

Occurring during the night, the story has a fantastic, dreamlike or nightmare-like character involving ladies in white and back, a woman of questionable sanity claiming to be Adrian’s proper wife, and her son who bears a startling resemblance to the deceased. The butler disappears, but not before notifying another near kin. There are chases throughout the house and a safecracking. All the while, Sir John wants to solve the case before breakfast and leave this crazy setting.

Sir John handles himself creditably, despite his years. But we all wonder how he will make sense of all the crazy things going on around him–and will he do it before breakfast? Despite the somewhat implausible plot, this book is a delightful, fast-paced romp. Find yourself a copy if you can!

Review: From London Far

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From London FarMichael Innes is the pseudonym of J.I.M Stewart who served as a lecturer at Queens College in Belfast and eventually as a professor at Oxford until retirement in 1973. Under his pseudonym, he wrote nearly 50 crime mysteries between 1936 and 1986. His most famous character is Sir John Appleby, a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector. All my encounters with Innes’ work up until now were works in which Appleby appeared.

From London Far is not one of these. The plot centers around Richard Meredith, an Oxford don comfortable in the study of Martial and Juvenal, who wanders into a tobacconist shop and in a scholarly reverie mutters, “London, a poem”. This sounds close enough to a secret password gaining him admission into an underworld of art thieves, which he quickly realizes as he comes across stolen works of Titian and Giotto. He discovers he is being mistaken for a German conspirator, Vogelsang, and that a woman being held, Jean Halliwell, has also gotten mixed up in this plot. Through quick thinking, he succeeds in pretending to be Vogelsang, kills the real Vogelsang when he turns up, and leads Jean in a hair-raising escape through chutes and across rooftops.

As they compare notes, they decide not to do the sensible thing and go to the police, but to take off to an island off the coast of Scotland to confront the apparent mastermind of these art thefts, Sir Properjohn, who ends up being the front man for the real mastermind, Don Perez. Along the way, they encounter a pair of eccentric sisters living in a rundown castle on the island, learn of the abduction of Higbed, a distinguished psychiatrist, and end up captured only to be abandoned on a sinking sub.

In Bond-like style, they manage to escape, which leads to the third part of this story, their encounter with the eccentric millionaire industrialist, Otis K. Neff and his crazy conveyor-belt mansion. It turns out that he is the buyer of all the stolen works. I will leave the denouement, and the role Higbed plays in all this, for you to discover if you wish.

J.I.M Stewart (a.k.a Michael Innes

J.I.M Stewart (a.k.a Michael Innes)

It all seemed to stretch plausibility a bit, but probably not more than a James Bond novel or movie, and likewise with a bit of tongue-in-cheek. I wondered if this was Innes’ way of poking fun at this genre of books (although this novel antedates Fleming’s first Bond novel by six years). This is also another in the genre of detective fiction that revolves around Oxford settings and characters, including some of the works of Dorothy L. Sayers and Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books and the Lewis  spinoff. If you like these kinds of stories, From London Far and other Innes’ works might give you a new vein to explore.

I have to say I am one who does enjoy such stories, but I still found this one a bit far-fetched, though not unenjoyable. I want to return to the Sir John Appleby stories that I have not read (a good number). For literary style, and storytelling Innes is right up there with P.D. James, Sayers, and others of his period, and worth discovering if you have not read his work.