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Sir John Appleby #10
Appleby's End
Detective-Inspector Appleby's chance meeting with the humorously eccentric Raven family becomes deadly serious when one of the Raven's is found murdered
211 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1945
54 people are currently reading
302 people want to read
About the author
Michael Innes
117books87followersMichael Innes was the pseudonym of John Innes MacKintosh (J.I.M.) Stewart (J.I.M. Stewart).
He was born in Edinburgh, and educated at Edinburgh Academy and Oriel College, Oxford. He was Lecturer in English at the University of Leeds from 1930 - 1935, and spent the succeeding ten years as Jury Professor of English at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
He returned to the United Kingdom in 1949, to become a Lecturer at the Queen's University of Belfast. In 1949 he became a Student (Fellow) of Christ Church, Oxford, becoming a Professor by the time of his retirement in 1973.
As J.I.M. Stewart he published a number of works of non-fiction, mainly critical studies of authors, including Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling, as well as about twenty works of fiction and a memoir, 'Myself and Michael Innes'.
As Michael Innes, he published numerous mystery novels and short story collections, most featuring the Scotland Yard detective John Appleby.
He was born in Edinburgh, and educated at Edinburgh Academy and Oriel College, Oxford. He was Lecturer in English at the University of Leeds from 1930 - 1935, and spent the succeeding ten years as Jury Professor of English at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
He returned to the United Kingdom in 1949, to become a Lecturer at the Queen's University of Belfast. In 1949 he became a Student (Fellow) of Christ Church, Oxford, becoming a Professor by the time of his retirement in 1973.
As J.I.M. Stewart he published a number of works of non-fiction, mainly critical studies of authors, including Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling, as well as about twenty works of fiction and a memoir, 'Myself and Michael Innes'.
As Michael Innes, he published numerous mystery novels and short story collections, most featuring the Scotland Yard detective John Appleby.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
June 21, 2023
4.5�
After whinging, whining & pleading for rereads on ŷ in the much missed Feedback Group, I don't reread much, other than my beloved . I'm older now & there are still too many good books waiting for me out there.
But I think, one day, I might reread this one.
Right from the start this was a very different witty read with all the most confusing place names!
There are a couple more pages of this!
For me, this book, although intriguing doesn't quite sustain the clever pace of the start & because there is a I sense that Innes had fun writing this!
A ŷ friend has told me it is fine to start from this book in the series, as the earlier Appleby books are either bloated (my least favourite fiction read) or weird. I don't always mind weird, so I might seek them out. But Innes's books are hard to find in my country in dead tree format, so I might just look for the later ones.
After whinging, whining & pleading for rereads on ŷ in the much missed Feedback Group, I don't reread much, other than my beloved . I'm older now & there are still too many good books waiting for me out there.
But I think, one day, I might reread this one.
Right from the start this was a very different witty read with all the most confusing place names!
"Yatter," said Mr Raven.
"I beg your pardon?"
"Yatter. A ghastly little place. Yatter, Abbot's Yatter and King's Yatter. Then we come to Drool...I think you said you hoped to change at Linger?
There are a couple more pages of this!
For me, this book, although intriguing doesn't quite sustain the clever pace of the start & because there is a I sense that Innes had fun writing this!
A ŷ friend has told me it is fine to start from this book in the series, as the earlier Appleby books are either bloated (my least favourite fiction read) or weird. I don't always mind weird, so I might seek them out. But Innes's books are hard to find in my country in dead tree format, so I might just look for the later ones.
February 21, 2014
One of the best John Appleby crime novels from Michael Innes, this one from just after the war: surreal, fantastical happenings in deepest rural England. Cows, dogs and village idiots turned to stone, a servant of the Manor found dead with only his head showing above the snow, a family of impoverished Ravens whose servants and village members seem to resemble them, pigs sold on the never-never, and only Scotland Yard's Appleby to solve and obfuscate. Erudite and intellectual in the telling, in the conversation, and in the blossoming romance ......
September 8, 2021
This one of the best of Innes' Appleby books. The sub-genre of mystery with donnish humour is not to every taste, but I like it enormously. If you enjoy your mysteries with ironic humour, literary allusions galore and occasional outright fantastical episodes, you will enjoy this book, and Michael Innes generally (also look for his "straight" novels written under his real name J. I. M. Stewart, which often have a mystery or suspense plot).
Innes' writing is not just classic whodunit and erudite humour. Consider this piece of fine descriptive writing, from the opening of "Appleby's End": 'Sunday afternoon, which in England subtly spreads itself over the face even of inanimate Nature, stretched to the flat horizon. The fields were clothed in patchy white like half-hearted penitents; here and there cattle stood steamy and dejected, burdened like their fellows in Thomas Hardy’s poems with some intuitive low-down on essential despair; and now on the outskirts of a village the train trundled past a yellow brick conventicle constructed on the basis of hardly more cheery theological convictions.'
If you like Innes, you will likely also enjoy Edmund Crispin, his protegé.
Innes' writing is not just classic whodunit and erudite humour. Consider this piece of fine descriptive writing, from the opening of "Appleby's End": 'Sunday afternoon, which in England subtly spreads itself over the face even of inanimate Nature, stretched to the flat horizon. The fields were clothed in patchy white like half-hearted penitents; here and there cattle stood steamy and dejected, burdened like their fellows in Thomas Hardy’s poems with some intuitive low-down on essential despair; and now on the outskirts of a village the train trundled past a yellow brick conventicle constructed on the basis of hardly more cheery theological convictions.'
If you like Innes, you will likely also enjoy Edmund Crispin, his protegé.
March 2, 2018
This instalment of the Appleby series is from 1945, and it has all of Innes's typical hallmarks; the dry wit, the literary allusions and the intricate puzzle are all there. However, it also has a sort of bizarre Gothic feel about it, with odd names, very odd characters and so on. I found this quite amusing, and a welcome change from the academic settings its predecessor, The Weight Of The Evidence.
I find I have to space my Innes books out quite widely these days or they become just a bit arch and knowing, but as an occasional fun read they remain very enjoyable and I can recommend Appleby's End to anyone who likes a witty and well written crime novel.
(My thanks to Ipso books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
I find I have to space my Innes books out quite widely these days or they become just a bit arch and knowing, but as an occasional fun read they remain very enjoyable and I can recommend Appleby's End to anyone who likes a witty and well written crime novel.
(My thanks to Ipso books for an ARC via NetGalley.)
June 15, 2023
After the first few pages, which felt terribly overwritten, I enjoyed every minute of this convoluted goof of a novel. It even has a touch of cerebral romance!
The scene opens on a train. Appleby has been sent down to a rural village to unravel a mystery, though he has been told nothing about it. He is disgusted to see his own face in a discarded tabloid newspaper that has revived an old case he has solved. Sharing the railcar with him is an erudite elderly man, who invites him to spend the night at his house because it will be impossible for Appleby to reach his destination that night.
From then on, things become bonkers and unexplained circumstances proliferate. Characters eccentric, an old country house full of the bizarre spoils of generations, a dead body, mysterious substitutions, even hints of witchcraft pile in upon the bemused detective. Appleby wades in cheerfully, warmed by an instant attraction to the young lady of the house. He solves the mystery/mysteries in a tidy twenty-four hours of nonstop insanity.
Innes’s writing style is too elaborate and allusive for some readers (in real life he was J. I. M. Stewart, a literature don at Oriel College, Oxford) but I love chasing his mind and sometimes falling by the wayside. In this book he is not the only one who savors academic obscurities, the entire family he has fallen in with is so inclined and even, occasionally, more secondary characters. This manner of writing can become tedious in Innes’s longer mysteries but this one is short enough to pull it off. Besides, the mystery itself has literary roots and the quotations and echoes of quotations all go toward elucidating the action, so it feels like a cohesive piece and not mere showing off. The whole effort is lighthearted and delightfully daft.
The scene opens on a train. Appleby has been sent down to a rural village to unravel a mystery, though he has been told nothing about it. He is disgusted to see his own face in a discarded tabloid newspaper that has revived an old case he has solved. Sharing the railcar with him is an erudite elderly man, who invites him to spend the night at his house because it will be impossible for Appleby to reach his destination that night.
From then on, things become bonkers and unexplained circumstances proliferate. Characters eccentric, an old country house full of the bizarre spoils of generations, a dead body, mysterious substitutions, even hints of witchcraft pile in upon the bemused detective. Appleby wades in cheerfully, warmed by an instant attraction to the young lady of the house. He solves the mystery/mysteries in a tidy twenty-four hours of nonstop insanity.
Innes’s writing style is too elaborate and allusive for some readers (in real life he was J. I. M. Stewart, a literature don at Oriel College, Oxford) but I love chasing his mind and sometimes falling by the wayside. In this book he is not the only one who savors academic obscurities, the entire family he has fallen in with is so inclined and even, occasionally, more secondary characters. This manner of writing can become tedious in Innes’s longer mysteries but this one is short enough to pull it off. Besides, the mystery itself has literary roots and the quotations and echoes of quotations all go toward elucidating the action, so it feels like a cohesive piece and not mere showing off. The whole effort is lighthearted and delightfully daft.
February 24, 2015
If you can put up with the writing style, which is erudite to the point of pretention, and have a taste for the bizarre, then Innes will be your cup of tea.
While I am generally not sure I do like the writing style, I do appreciate the references and the plots always intrigue me. This one doesn't disappoint and there is a twist in the last sentence!
While I am generally not sure I do like the writing style, I do appreciate the references and the plots always intrigue me. This one doesn't disappoint and there is a twist in the last sentence!
November 11, 2020
The British dry humor, bordering on farce, of Appleby’s End far out-weighed any other feature for me. Hilarious characters (Mrs. Ulstrup and her bovine proclivities particularly stand out). And how can you not love little English villages named Sneak, Snarl, and Drool? British writing through and through, though it was tough-sledding for me sometimes with all the literary, mythological and poetic allusions. But that is my own short-coming, not the author’s, who was an Oxford don. From the moment we meet Inspector Appleby on a train chugging through the English countryside during a snowstorm and we are introduced to the eccentric Raven family until the denouement in the family’s Scriptorium, the reader is taken through a series of fantastic, dream-like events. With a delightful twist at the very end!
April 29, 2021
From BBC Radio4 Drama available @TIA:
Dramatisation of the 1945 crime novel.
Appleby's End was the name of the station where Detective Inspector John Appleby got off the train from Scotland Yard. But that was not the only coincidence. Everything that happened from then on related back to stories by Ranulph Raven, Victorian novelist - animals were replaced by marble effigies, someone received a tombstone telling him when he would die, and a servant was found buried up to his neck in snow, dead. Why did Ranulph Raven's mysterious descendants make such a point of inviting Appleby to spend the night at their house?
Dramatisation of the 1945 crime novel.
Appleby's End was the name of the station where Detective Inspector John Appleby got off the train from Scotland Yard. But that was not the only coincidence. Everything that happened from then on related back to stories by Ranulph Raven, Victorian novelist - animals were replaced by marble effigies, someone received a tombstone telling him when he would die, and a servant was found buried up to his neck in snow, dead. Why did Ranulph Raven's mysterious descendants make such a point of inviting Appleby to spend the night at their house?
September 16, 2015
"Appleby's Dream"
"Appleby's End" begins with the eponymous Inspector taking a train journey. The reader is quickly plunged into a dreamlike atmosphere. Crossing the dark winter landscape, the train passes places with names out of some strange allegory: Drool, Snarl, Linger, Long Dream Manor, and of course, Appleby's End itself. On the train the Inspector meets a Mr. Raven, who is working on an encyclopedia, and is therefore nearly omniscient about everything that begins with the letters A through R. The other passengers in the carriage, all eccentric in their own ways, start to remind Appleby of characters out of books.
This recalls Innes' earlier novel, "The Spider Strikes", in which a writer is stalked by one of his own characters who has seemingly come to life. It begins to look like the reader is in for another attack launched on reality by literature run amok. What follows does not disappoint, although this time the invasion is carried on not by unruly characters, but through scenes and images borrowed from the work of Mr. Raven's ancestor, an obscure Victorian novelist named Ranulph Raven.
Heavy snow forces Appleby to change his travel plans. His new destination becomes, appropriately enough, Long Dream Manor, home of the Raven family. Along the way he floats down a river in a broken-down carriage and spends part of the night in a haystack with one of the younger Ravens, Judith, who considers immortalizing the Inspector in a sculpture entitled simply 'Object'. Can it be that Appleby has found true love?
But the dream quickly turns nightmarish when he and Judith find a dead body--the result of either a very strange suicide, or a shamelessly plagiarized murder. Appleby proceeds to investigate and is led to a chain of other odd occurrences, all mirroring events from Ranulph Raven's half-forgotten stories (see the summary of the book above).
Several interesting minor characters add their dashes of unique madness to the general stew, among them a woman convinced that she's actually a cow, a curate who warns of a countryside rife with sorcery, and a confused and overwhelmed local police inspector.
There is more than a touch of the surreal here, but it's a homely English sort of surrealism. For every image that might have come from a painting by de Chirico, there's a character who could have stepped out of a Dickens novel.
For me, all this was mostly delightful, but readers who are looking for a puzzle to solve and expecting anything remotely approaching 'fair play' should probably look elsewhere. The mystery in "Appleby's End" is just one more thread woven into the story's tapestry. Still, in the end, Appleby reconciles the dream with reality, and all is revealed, bringing this eccentric comedy of manners to a satisfying close.
"Appleby's End" begins with the eponymous Inspector taking a train journey. The reader is quickly plunged into a dreamlike atmosphere. Crossing the dark winter landscape, the train passes places with names out of some strange allegory: Drool, Snarl, Linger, Long Dream Manor, and of course, Appleby's End itself. On the train the Inspector meets a Mr. Raven, who is working on an encyclopedia, and is therefore nearly omniscient about everything that begins with the letters A through R. The other passengers in the carriage, all eccentric in their own ways, start to remind Appleby of characters out of books.
This recalls Innes' earlier novel, "The Spider Strikes", in which a writer is stalked by one of his own characters who has seemingly come to life. It begins to look like the reader is in for another attack launched on reality by literature run amok. What follows does not disappoint, although this time the invasion is carried on not by unruly characters, but through scenes and images borrowed from the work of Mr. Raven's ancestor, an obscure Victorian novelist named Ranulph Raven.
Heavy snow forces Appleby to change his travel plans. His new destination becomes, appropriately enough, Long Dream Manor, home of the Raven family. Along the way he floats down a river in a broken-down carriage and spends part of the night in a haystack with one of the younger Ravens, Judith, who considers immortalizing the Inspector in a sculpture entitled simply 'Object'. Can it be that Appleby has found true love?
But the dream quickly turns nightmarish when he and Judith find a dead body--the result of either a very strange suicide, or a shamelessly plagiarized murder. Appleby proceeds to investigate and is led to a chain of other odd occurrences, all mirroring events from Ranulph Raven's half-forgotten stories (see the summary of the book above).
Several interesting minor characters add their dashes of unique madness to the general stew, among them a woman convinced that she's actually a cow, a curate who warns of a countryside rife with sorcery, and a confused and overwhelmed local police inspector.
There is more than a touch of the surreal here, but it's a homely English sort of surrealism. For every image that might have come from a painting by de Chirico, there's a character who could have stepped out of a Dickens novel.
For me, all this was mostly delightful, but readers who are looking for a puzzle to solve and expecting anything remotely approaching 'fair play' should probably look elsewhere. The mystery in "Appleby's End" is just one more thread woven into the story's tapestry. Still, in the end, Appleby reconciles the dream with reality, and all is revealed, bringing this eccentric comedy of manners to a satisfying close.
April 19, 2020
This is my favorite of the Inspector Appleby mysteries. This one features a fantastical setting deep in the almost-mythical English countryside, covered with snow, with station names that let you know you are entering almost an alternate reality: Appleby's End to start with, and then there's Snarl, Drool, and Linger. The Raven family could be out of Wuthering Heights, except that they are very funny characters instead of the stuff of nightmares or melodrama. The characters speak with a combination of country flavor and academic erudition as is usual with an Innes book. I had my dictionary at my side and found lots of interesting new words.
Once you read it, you will never, ever forget the haystack episode. I first read this book almost 40 years ago and had forgotten almost everything except the haystack. I knew I had to read it again sometime, and it was well worth waiting until I had forgotten the mystery.
Once you read it, you will never, ever forget the haystack episode. I first read this book almost 40 years ago and had forgotten almost everything except the haystack. I knew I had to read it again sometime, and it was well worth waiting until I had forgotten the mystery.
November 11, 2020
Scotland Yard detective John Appleby is trapped on a slow train, to investigate "strange happenings," when he meets first Everard Raven, the noted encyclopedist, and then the rest of the Raven family, most notably Everard's cousin Judith, a sardonic but lovely young woman. Soon Appleby finds himself puzzling over the relationships among various rustic families. In this case, Appleby must not only figure out what's going on, but also let his colleague come to an erroneous conclusion, the better to serve justice.
October 29, 2011
In a class by itself. Donnish humor. Obscurely criminal behavior. I've read it well over ten times in the last forty years, and only wish I could read it again for the third or fourth time. Contains one of the most unusual courtships in literature.
June 26, 2023
Odd and quirky which is rather not to my taste.
July 15, 2013
I've read a few of Michael Innes' Appleby stories, and I have enjoyed them, but perhaps not as much as they could be enjoyed had I more familiarity with the many literary references that Innes rolls out in the course of the story-telling. This book is not one to listen to (audiobook) at bedtime, as it requires more attention than a drowsy listener/reader would likely give it.
One reviewer mentioned that this story reminded him of Jerome Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat . . ." and I had had the very same thought. Things happen that are so distinctly odd, yet somehow acceptable as something that could have happened.
One of the reasons I keep reading these stories is that I want to know more about Appleby. I've not yet discovered a list for a chronological order, nor do I know if there is any chronological order as far as it concerns the development of the character of Appleby. If any reviewer has read all of the books and has a recommendation, I'd appreciate hearing it.
One reviewer mentioned that this story reminded him of Jerome Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat . . ." and I had had the very same thought. Things happen that are so distinctly odd, yet somehow acceptable as something that could have happened.
One of the reasons I keep reading these stories is that I want to know more about Appleby. I've not yet discovered a list for a chronological order, nor do I know if there is any chronological order as far as it concerns the development of the character of Appleby. If any reviewer has read all of the books and has a recommendation, I'd appreciate hearing it.
February 4, 2022
This book was absolutely awful; I couldn't finish it . Not one character was likeable, not least the main character, Inspector Appleby, so it was really a non-starter for me. The story had way too much of a wiff of magic realism for my tastes. Too whimsical for the pedestrian setting and Appleby himself just didn't seem like that kind of man, so there was incongruity too. As a senior police officer I just couldn't assimilate the way in which he let that girl - I can't even remember her name now - lead him around by the nose by dint of her sheer imperiousness (and for that, read 'rudeness') and he even let her put him into a compromising situation (in the haystack), even though he knew better. It was just ridiculous, so I stopped reading. I didn't find it enjoyable so I saw no reason to continue. Not recommended.
April 18, 2021
It had me on the first page when the author observed that the cattle in the fields as seen from a slow train in winter seemed to
be burdened like their fellows in Thomas Hardy with some intuitive lowdown on essential despair. (I’m quoting from memory. It only gets better after that.) Innes wears his erudition so lightly that when I read him as a kid (this novel being my gateway drug) I ended up with a whole lot
of oddball interests, in things he introduced me to. (E.g., in this book, Swinburne; creepy late Victorian horror stories.)
be burdened like their fellows in Thomas Hardy with some intuitive lowdown on essential despair. (I’m quoting from memory. It only gets better after that.) Innes wears his erudition so lightly that when I read him as a kid (this novel being my gateway drug) I ended up with a whole lot
of oddball interests, in things he introduced me to. (E.g., in this book, Swinburne; creepy late Victorian horror stories.)
October 14, 2012
Even though it was necessary to read this book with a dictionary nearby, I found the zany characters and situations humorous and entertaining. We will be contrasting and comparing the book with Donna Andrew's Murder with Peacocks. Further comments to follow to follow the discussion in Nov but I must admit I enjoyed the book in spite of the polysyllabic vocabulary. It brought to mind another book--Three Men in a Boat Not to Mention the Dog--and the cleverness of a Jasper Fforde novel.
January 4, 2020
Finished 2019 on a high and began 2020 on a low. Tedious and obsessed with verbal cleverness rather than communication or elegance. It does shed some light on gothic traditions, which is of interest to me in a family history quest, and gets some marks for its depiction of time and location. An overall sense of smug self-satisfaction.
April 21, 2019
This book and Edmund Crispin’s Buried for Pleasure are my two favorite vintage British mysteries. They’re fairly classist and occasionally politically incorrect, but vastly entertaining and worth re-reading occasionally.
September 6, 2018
This is 4th Inspector Appleby book I’ve read. Each one seems very different. I think Michael Innes� writing is an acquired taste with long, meandering sentences. At times I was bored and bewildered and nearly stopped reading, but I persevered until events became clearer, which they did by the end of the book.
Scotland Yard Detective Inspector John Appleby and Everard Raven, once a barrister and now a compiler of encyclopedias, meet on a train. Appleby is travelling to Snarl and Everard to his home at Long Dream Manor where generations of the Raven family have lived. They get off the train at ‘Appleby’s End� station and from that point on the book travels off on a perilous journey, as supernatural events foretold by one of the Raven ancestors, Ranulph Raven, come true forty years later- or do they?
Throughout the book Innes drops in literary and cultural allusions and comments on writing fiction. At one point Appleby thinks it would be ‘pleasant to retire from the elucidating of crime and give oneself to the creating of unashamed fantasies,� and that is precisely what Innes has done in this book. Appleby’s End is surreal, a macabre fantasy with a complex and completely unrealistic plot and strange characters, with names like Heyhoe, Rainbird, Hoobin and Scurl,who live in rural, out-of-the-way places with names such as Yatter, Sneak, Snarl, Drool, Boxer’s Bottom, and Linger. There’s been a lot of interbreeding and pig rustling. Strange things are happening, people are turned into marble, or are replaced by waxworks. There’s Mrs Ulstrop who believes she is a cow, plenty of red herrings, ‘spotlights�, needles in haystacks and tales of a ‘howling and hollering head�.
During this rigmarole of events Appleby becomes engaged to Judith Raven, Everard’s cousin and there are hints that he will retire from the police force and become a farmer. This isn’t really a murder mystery and I didn’t like it as much as three of his earlier books that I’ve read- Death at the President’s Lodging, The Secret Vanguard, or The Daffodil Affair. Of those three I much prefer Death at the President’s Lodging, a ‘locked room� mystery.
Scotland Yard Detective Inspector John Appleby and Everard Raven, once a barrister and now a compiler of encyclopedias, meet on a train. Appleby is travelling to Snarl and Everard to his home at Long Dream Manor where generations of the Raven family have lived. They get off the train at ‘Appleby’s End� station and from that point on the book travels off on a perilous journey, as supernatural events foretold by one of the Raven ancestors, Ranulph Raven, come true forty years later- or do they?
Throughout the book Innes drops in literary and cultural allusions and comments on writing fiction. At one point Appleby thinks it would be ‘pleasant to retire from the elucidating of crime and give oneself to the creating of unashamed fantasies,� and that is precisely what Innes has done in this book. Appleby’s End is surreal, a macabre fantasy with a complex and completely unrealistic plot and strange characters, with names like Heyhoe, Rainbird, Hoobin and Scurl,who live in rural, out-of-the-way places with names such as Yatter, Sneak, Snarl, Drool, Boxer’s Bottom, and Linger. There’s been a lot of interbreeding and pig rustling. Strange things are happening, people are turned into marble, or are replaced by waxworks. There’s Mrs Ulstrop who believes she is a cow, plenty of red herrings, ‘spotlights�, needles in haystacks and tales of a ‘howling and hollering head�.
During this rigmarole of events Appleby becomes engaged to Judith Raven, Everard’s cousin and there are hints that he will retire from the police force and become a farmer. This isn’t really a murder mystery and I didn’t like it as much as three of his earlier books that I’ve read- Death at the President’s Lodging, The Secret Vanguard, or The Daffodil Affair. Of those three I much prefer Death at the President’s Lodging, a ‘locked room� mystery.
April 6, 2017
I like the Appleby's novels because they are so fantastical, so far-fetched that I can't help but smile when I read them. In this particular story, Inspector Appleby starts out on a long train journey, at the end of which he realizes he can't get to his final destination. As it's the middle of winter, he accepts an invitation to stay with a freshly made train acquaintance, Mr. Raven. It turns out that several of Mr. Raven's family members were also in the same compartment, and they all set out for home in a decrepit cart driven by a drunken coachman. The cart gets washed away while crossing a river, the group is broken up (with Appleby and young Judith Raven being forced to seek shelter in a haystack). The next morning the drunken coachman is found dead, buried in the snow. This unusual position of the body seems to be related to the gothic stories of one of the Raven ancestors, a now forgotten writer. Murder or accident? And what's up with all the other strange happenings in the county ? The boy who disappeared, and the old woman who fell down the well, and the horse that was switched in its harness? All of this seems to have something to do with the writings of the Victorian Raven, but how? And why? and who?
January 28, 2018
This was great fun, with overtones of "Cold Comfort Farm", as well as the usual Classical and Eng.Lit.
references and swipes at Agatha Christie and Victorian literature, painting and sculpture.
Appleby meets the Raven family, among them, Judith, his future wife. They are both swept away and Appleby becomes involved in sorting out a swathe of rural shenanigans which might, or, this being a Michael Innes, might not, encompass murder, witchcraft and lost heirs.
All is sorted out and there is a deliciously unexpected sting in the ultimate paragraph.
Thank you to Netgalley and Ipso Books for the digital review copy.
references and swipes at Agatha Christie and Victorian literature, painting and sculpture.
Appleby meets the Raven family, among them, Judith, his future wife. They are both swept away and Appleby becomes involved in sorting out a swathe of rural shenanigans which might, or, this being a Michael Innes, might not, encompass murder, witchcraft and lost heirs.
All is sorted out and there is a deliciously unexpected sting in the ultimate paragraph.
Thank you to Netgalley and Ipso Books for the digital review copy.
August 13, 2017
Isn't it funny how a novel written and set in the early decades of the 20th century reads nothing like we would expect it to. Our own distant knowledge of times such as the 1930s is coloured by the prejudice of 90 years and we expect writers of that time to write in the same way as a modern writer setting a novel then would. References should be to Art Deco and the rise of Hitler, not to Meccano and Sherlock Holmes which are our things.
Anyway, great book, as if Poirot had been created by PG Wodehouse.
Anyway, great book, as if Poirot had been created by PG Wodehouse.
June 7, 2018
This is a joy to read if you like a complicated series of parallel plots, a baroque family whose eccentricities are wonderful and a satisfying twist on the last page. Michael Innes has created a bizarre setting for a completely untraditional murder story with elements of witchcraft, winter, rustic goings on and a fine collection of completely implausible events. His tongue must have been firmly in his cheek for this book.
March 3, 2018
This Appleby was finally a bridge too far; gobbledy-gook nonsense from the first sentence. Like, we GET IT, Mr. Innes, you're waaaay literary and you're tweaking the genre. Oooooh. The least a salty author can do is make his or her polemic readable and this novel fails at that minimum hurdle. A hard pass.
I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
April 8, 2018
Innes' style isn't for everyone - donnish, allusive, recondite, convoluted... It's hard to imagine that he wrote anything better than this and certainly not anything funnier. In short, it was sublime.
August 2, 2018
A book that can only be read with a dictionary nearby (thank you kindle for the build-in dictionary). It is filled with arcane English and literary references. The story itself is too improbable, with Appleby investigating some seemingly practical jokes.
December 16, 2020
My first Sir John Appleby read. I started out liking the book, but with all the words I had to look up and the bizarre happenings, and the fact that it didn't go anywhere made it somewhat disappointing in the end. I might try another Sir John Appleby book just to see how it goes.
February 3, 2022
Not the book for me. Michael Innes shows off his classical education featuring a unlikeable family. I read about half the book before skipping to the end to learn the explanation for a bunch of seemingly supernatural occurrences.
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