Tag: Michael Innes

Going it Alone by Michael Innes

August 31, 2020

Originally published in 1980

Gilbert Averell, though he is neither a tycoon nor a pop star, is avoiding some of the rigors of British taxation by living for part of the time in France. But he is unhappy about the number of weeks in every year that he has to spend in exile from his native land. So he falls for his insouciant friend Georges’s suggestion that, as they look much alike, they should exchange passports for a short spell, thus enabling Gilbert to have an illicit week in England under his friend’s name – while Georges (who bears the title of Prince de Silistrie) takes a jaunt to Italy with Gilbert’s passport.

Is the offer made in simple friendship or is Georges up to something? And why does Gilbert’s sister Ruth make such a strangely uncommunicative phone call from England? And why does the importunate M. Gustave Flaubert attach himself to Gilbert so determinedly during the flight from Paris? And why have two nasty attempts already been made to murder Gilbert’s seemingly quite harmless nephew Tim?

Going It Alone marks my sixth encounter with the works of Michael Innes (assuming we don’t include the Disney movie adaptation of Candleshoe), a writer who I have had a rather dynamic relationship with. For those who don’t recall, I began by reading two Appleby books that I disliked so thoroughly that I declared I would never read another book by the author. I then went back on my word several months later when I found an inverted mystery novel by the author that I liked so much that I regularly cite it as one of my favorite examples of the form. My subsequent forays into Innes’ work have fallen somewhere between these two extremes leaving me with little sense about how I feel about him beyond a general feeling that I seem to have little time for Appleby, his series sleuth.

Going It Alone is a standalone title that Innes wrote towards the end of his career. It seems to be little-reviewed – even Nick’s excellent Innes section on The Grandest Game in the World does not cover it yet though he has shared that he considers it to be a minor work. I, of course, picked it up expecting to find an inverted mystery – an error on my part, though I thought the central premise was promising enough that I decided to see it through to the end.

The central character of the book is Gilbert Averell, an aging Englishman who had inherited a small fortune from his city trader father and decided to live off the proceeds. To avoid having to pay British taxes on his income, Gilbert lives most of the year in France and is limited to visiting his English home and family for just a few weeks each year. This is a matter of great frustration for him and so when a friend of his, the Prince de Silistrie, suggests that they might exchange passports to allow him to visit more frequently he gives the matter serious consideration.

His mind is made up to take up the offer when he receives a telephone call from his sister seeking advice. He sets off for Britain but during the flight he finds that he has attracted the attention of another passenger who tries to tag along with him. Then upon returning to his home he gets caught up in a rather strange sequence of events involving his nephew.

Averell is an interesting choice of protagonist, in part because his decision to relocate abroad to avoid taxation may make him rather unsympathetic in some readers’ eyes. For those unfamiliar with the British taxation situation in this period, in 1974 an investment income surcharge raised the top rate to 98%. At the time Innes was writing the Thatcher government had already begun to reduce the personal income tax liabilities and the surcharge would be abolished five years later so the background to this book is specific to a very short period in British political history.

This isn’t so much of interest to me however as the idea that Averell is being used to explore some generational conflict. Much as Agatha Christie’s Passenger to Frankfurt had some things to say about youth culture (albeit rather clumsily), Innes similarly is interested in exploring this new generation of youth and their values. Where Christie saw youth as being dangerous, Innes is more sympathetic and recognizes that the change is not entirely for the worse. By throwing the aging Averell among a group of young people in the second half of the novel, we get to see not only the contrast but also the similarities between them.

Innes seems to recognize that counterculture, rather than showing a disinterest in society, can be an expression of care. While it may be misguided or ineffective, it was not inherently threatening, nor does it borne solely out of hedonism. In short, I regard Innes as optimistic rather than reactionary.

It should be pointed out though that while Innes explores some of these societal phenomena, his central characters are exclusively from a single stratum of British society (or rather, half of a stratum – while there are female characters they are literally all shipped off to Italy at one point in the story to get them out of the way). If there is a weakness to this thematic discussion it is that it does not incorporate alternative voices or perspectives. I suspect that it would also have meant that this book may have felt quite old-fashioned at the point when it was first published and may quite unintentionally benefit from being read as vintage fiction.

While the author’s penchant for literary allusion is on full display here, particularly in conversations between Gilbert and his nephew, the book is thoroughly readable and written in an entertaining and engaging style. It is not consistently funny enough to be described as a farce but it does contain elements of that style with some situations driven by misunderstandings as characters contrive to put themselves into some rather outlandish situations.

Those situations can, unfortunately, feel quite disjointed though it is entertaining enough to follow along and see how they will connect to one another. Structurally Going It Alone is not so much an exploration of an overarching mystery than it is a series of unlikely mysterious events, slightly complicated by the matter of the passports. The reader has little chance of predicting where this story is headed – it isn’t really set up to be clued in that way – but rather we watch things unfold and try to anticipate how the different strands of the tale with overlap and interact with each other. Accordingly I would suggest that it probably has more to offer thriller fans than detective fiction readers, though what passes for thrills here are decidedly low octane in nature.

Overall then I think I can agree with Nick that this is a minor work, though it is not entirely without charm. Innes is at least amusing and has something interesting to say about the way British society was changing at that time, even if I think he explores that topic with from a limited perspective. Still, it is a long way from the strengths of The New Sonia Wayward which remains my preferred Innes title by quite some distance.

The Verdict: The plot is loose to say the least and the crime elements are distinctly secondary concerns but Innes’ reflections on youth culture offer some interest.

Money from Holme by Michael Innes

October 8, 2019

Originally Published in 1964.

Sebastian Holme was a painter who, as the exhibition catalogue recorded, had met a tragic death during a foreign revolution. Art dealer, Braunkopf, has made a small fortune from the exhibition.

Unfortunately, Holme turns up at the private view in this fascinating mystery of the art world in which Mervyn Cheel, distinguished critic and pointillist painter, lands in very hot water. 

My relationship with Michael Innes has been a fairly frustrating one. He is certainly an author who is capable of frustrating me like few others can. At his best he can be witty and clever while the situations he creates are often imaginative and explore interesting ideas yet it is hard to escape the feeling that he was a mystery fiction writer who had little interest in writing mystery stories.

Money from Holme was a later, standalone effort from Innes that might be considered an inverted crime story. It begins with Mervyn Cheel, an art critic, attending an exhibition of Sebastian Holme’s paintings. Holme had been an up-and-coming artist who had been living in Africa when he had been caught up in a revolution and was killed. Much of his work was destroyed in the violence and so the values of his remaining small body of work have rocketed and his celebrity has grown. During the show however Cheel is surprised when he notices a man he is certain is Sebastian Holme attending the show.

Cheel soon learns that Holme did not actually die and so he devises a scheme that he believes will make him rich. Were Holme to return to life in the public’s mind then the prices of his work will inevitably fall. Cheel persuades him to remain dead and work to reproduce the destroyed works of art so that he can try to quietly sell them to collectors as though they were the originals.

Given the nature of Cheel’s plan, I think it is fair to question whether we should really consider this an inverted crime novel at all. As Mervyn Cheel points out at several points in the novel, it is hard to say if he is guilty of any great crime at all for much of the book. He is, after all, trying to sell works that are authentically by the artist he claims them to be, even if the circumstances he describes are not accurate.

Certainly the criminal aspects of this novel are not Innes’ focus. Instead, the most interesting aspect of Money from Holme is its discussion of various aspects of the art world. This touches upon an artist’s relationship to his subject, the commercial realities of art trading and the role of the art critic. Innes’ insights into this world are not exactly unique, nor are they necessarily profound, but the situations the characters find themselves in are clever and they are often explored with wit.

Having now read several Innes inverted stories I have noticed that each has involved a variation on a common theme – the idea of identity substitution. The approach taken here is a little different but it is interesting to see him continuing to play with these sorts of ideas. While Innes had been playing with related themes, each book feels quite distinct.

The treatment of the art world struck me as a little reminiscent of Kyril Bonfiglioli’s Don’t Shoot Me (the novel which inspired the movie Mortdecai) with the protagonist finding himself in ludicrous situations often of his own devising and borne of his own personal weaknesses, working himself into deeper trouble. Bonfiglioli’s novel is a sharper and funnier read but both books possess an irreverent tone that did a lot to endear them to me.

The jokes that did not land for me were those related to the fictional African nation of Wamba. I can understand why Innes chooses to create a fictional African country rather than locating his action somewhere real – particularly given the rather fluid nature of politics in that decade – and there is some light exploration of British foreign policy but any subtlety is masked by the general presentation of that information, such as the “gag” that the country’s capital is Wamba Wamba. It is not untypical for this era of writing but it is disappointing.

One of the most curious decisions Innes makes is to emphasize how unpleasant his protagonist, the art critic Mervyn Cheel, can be. For instance, early in the book we learn about how he has previously forced his attentions on a woman. His disrespectful attitude towards women is largely treated as a matter of comedy, particularly his proclivity to pinch their bottoms.

While I think we are meant to take this as evidence that he is an unpleasant, unprincipled sort it seems rather odd to see him treated as a bit of a rogue rather than a villain at points in this story. Certainly those moments didn’t strike me as being as sharp comedically as Innes’ discussion of the art world was.

One consequence of Cheel not being a particularly pleasant or likeable character is that we can take some pleasure in his downfall. Although Innes’ story isn’t particularly complex in terms of its structure or plot, the ending he devises did feel fairly satisfying because of how well it reflects the other themes of the story. Dramatically it feels pretty appropriate, providing a fitting and gently comedic resolution to Cheel’s story.

Money from Holme is not a classic work of crime fiction by any means. Even if we ignore some of the problems I have with its dated sense of humor, the plotting is fairly light and Innes’ focus is on developing his comedic situations rather than a tightly structured story. Still, the themes and ideas Innes explores are interesting and quite clever, even if the approach taken is sometimes rather lacking in subtlety.

If you forget that this is described as a crime novel and instead enjoy it as a rather absurd adventure with some crime elements then I think you will likely get a little more out of this. Certainly I enjoyed it more than The Gay Phoenix. For those looking for an inverted crime story by Innes, I would still recommend you look at The New Sonia Wayward instead.

The Verdict: A sometimes amusing but dated artistic caper story with weak mystery elements.

The Gay Phoenix by Michael Innes

July 29, 2019

Originally Published 1976
Inspector Appleby #30
Preceded by The Appleby File
Followed by The Ampersand Papers

Few writers frustrate me as much as Michael Innes does. My first two experiences were so irritating and disappointing that I swore to myself that I would never pick up one of his novels again. I broke that pledge when I stumbled on The New Sonia Wayward which turned out, against all my expectations, to be one of my favorite inverted mysteries. This got me wondering, could I have misjudged Innes?

The Gay Phoenix was the natural book to follow up on that positive experience given that it is also an inverted story. Like The New Sonia Wayward this book begins with two characters at sea (aboard the titular Gay Phoenix), one of whom dies in a way that the other is not responsible. Also like that book this leads to an assumption of a false identity, albeit in a more direct way.

The two men are brothers, Arthur and Charles, who have a rather strained relationship. Charles, the dead man, was the elder brother and had achieved considerable success in the business world, living the jetset lifestyle of lavish spending, eating and promiscuity. Arthur has long resented this, not only because he has failed to find that same success in life but also because his bachelor brother has told him that his money will not pass to him on his death.

When Charles is struck dead by a loose beam, Arthur sees an opportunity and decides to cast his brother’s body over the side of the ship and assume his identity. The two share a similar appearance although he has to make a small sacrifice with the help of a sharp, heated blade to pull the deception off. It seems that Charles’ fortune and lifestyle will be his for the taking and then things take an inevitable turn for the worse…

Let’s start with a positive – Innes may have repeated himself with several elements of this story but Arthur’s plan on how he will pull off this trick is rather impressive and quite ingenious on a psychological level. Unfortunately this section of the story is relayed to us as a tiresome anecdote from an Antipodean doctor at a dull dinner party but while this has its frustrations, it does allow the reader to work to deduce exactly what Arthur is playing at for themselves as at first it seems his actions will be counterproductive.

I also really enjoyed the two chapters that follow in which we follow Arthur as he returns to England and begins spending his brother’s fortune. At this point we suspect that something will go wrong but the nature of the problem will probably surprise the reader, as will the manner in which it is raised.

Innes’ approach here is to cultivate a sense of unpredictability, creating a situation in which Arthur is forced to respond to events he has no knowledge of. At its best this can be very funny, leading to some very memorable moments where he is caught off guard, but it also means that we find ourselves quite far away from anything approaching mystery writing. Innes does not lay any groundwork for these developments and so the reader cannot reason what will happen, they simply have to sit back and see where the story will take them.

Nor can we say that we are in thriller territory. While there is a sequence in which Arthur finds himself in physical danger, most of the rest of the story is talkative as opposed to being action-driven. What plot there is will often be relayed to the reader after the fact in gossipy society conversations which clearly amused the author. Sadly they didn’t do the same for me.

That is not to say that I was completely immune to the book’s sense of humor. Not only did I laugh out loud at a few early wrinkles in Arthur’s plan, there is one very successful comedic sequence later on as Arthur finds himself unexpectedly face-to-face with someone who evidently knows him well, forcing him to try to bluff his way through the exchange. Here Innes lets us live in the moment, following the action as it happens, and the result is a scene that is not only surprising but that builds very effectively to a punchline moment, setting up the novel’s final act.

Increasingly I am coming to wonder if my real problem with Innes’ work lies in his series detective, Sir John Appleby. I have now read three Appleby mysteries and in each of the three I have felt that the character never asserts himself properly on the story, his investigations tending to meander around the actions of others’ rather than taking control of the action. His lack of any official standing here only amplifies that problem.

This case takes place after his career is over with him living in retirement with his wife in the English countryside. This means that his involvement here is in a strictly unofficial capacity, his interest aroused as a neighbor rather than as a detective. Even when he does get involved he remains relatively disinterested in providing a resolution to the affair, seeking answers mostly for the sake of his own curiosity.

As I read this I was struck by the feeling that we have a decent blend of a crime story and a comedy of errors ruined by the unwelcome intrusion of an ineffective investigation. The parts of the story that work best are those in which we live in the moment, following the unpredictable twists and turns as Arthur’s best laid plans threaten to collapse all around him. He is, after all, the more interesting character psychologically and I think it would have been interesting to explore precisely how things turn sour.

Unfortunately Innes’ interest lies in exploring the relationships between the social classes in the English countryside but I found little on offer either illuminating or particularly amusing. When you add in the author’s irritating habit of demonstrating his own superior vocabulary by using words such as otiose and bedizened at every opportunity and dressing key moments with literary allusions, it all makes for a rather frustrating and ultimately quite tiresome reading experience that brought all my bad memories of Innes’ writing flooding back.

While this book does have a few positive moments, I ultimately found it a rather unrewarding experience. It does offer up a few good ideas and moments but when you consider that Innes’ earlier novel The New Sonia Wayward trod a very similar path with far more wit, originality and a clearer sense of purpose I can see little reason to suggest you seek out a copy of this.

Further Reading

Nick Fuller is far more receptive to Innes than I am but he shares my disappointment in this one while Bev at My Reader’s Block appreciated this as a character study and liked Appleby’s wife but was disappointed in it as a detective story.

The New Sonia Wayward by Michael Innes

January 18, 2019

Originally Published 1960

I am never saying never again.

Last year I swore off Michael Innes having felt disappointed with Lament for a Maker and There Came Both Mist and Snow. I had found both books smug, tiresome and pretentious and I was thoroughly frustrated with the lack of a good mystery plot. I was absolutely adamant that I would never be reading one of his books again.

Yet here I am.

The New Sonia Wayward caught my eye when I noticed that it sounded like it might be an inverted crime or mystery. This is either a well-established weakness or enthusiasm of mine depending on your view of the sub-genre and while I remained wary of Innes, I thought the premise sounded quite intriguing.

The New Sonia Wayward is not a story of a murder but rather the attempt by someone to pretend that someone did not die. This premise is unusual but not unique – Henry Wade’s Too Soon to Die has a similar starting point though where that book takes a dark turn, The New Sonia Wayward is a much more light-hearted experience. Think of it as a sort of highbrow Weekend at Bernie’s where every now and again characters make allusions to Keats and Wordsworth to remind you how intelligent they are.

The novel begins with Colonel Ffolliot Petticate wondering what to do about his wife’s unexpected death aboard their boat. The retired army surgeon carries out a quick examination and believes she must have died of an embolism. This, we learn, is inconvenient for the Colonel as he is entirely dependent on his wife’s royalties from her romance novels and he is concerned about how he could survive without that income.

Realizing that she has left a half-completed manuscript he hatches a plan to complete it himself. After draining the best part of a bottle of whisky he decides to dress her corpse in a bathing costume and tip it overboard before heading back to port. He intends to explain his wife’s absence away by suggesting she has left him to travel the world. He is a skilled writer himself and while he considers that type of writing beneath him, he knows enough of her style to think he can pull it off.

This is just the starting point for a novel that is frequently unpredictable, taking many strange and unexpected turns. There are several reversals of fortune, misunderstandings and poor judgments, each of which further complicate Colonel Petticate’s position and put him in more danger of discovery. These moments are often quite amusing, sometimes verging on the farcical, and a large part of the fun of this book lies in seeing Petticate’s flustered and ineffective reactions to each of these fresh developments.

Innes structures his story cleverly, breaking it into three sections, each of which see Petticate confronting different challenges and culminating in a moment that will significantly change his situation.

The more incredible of these moments is that first twist that occurs while he is on board a train and has a conversation with a neighbor. I don’t want to spoil what happens as it is entertaining and puzzling but I will say that I think this is the only element of the novel that didn’t exactly work for me as it prompts a development that simultaneously manages to be highly unlikely while also seeming to signpost a late plot development. I think the book does enough with this idea to justify its use but it certainly wouldn’t work in a more conventional mystery and I did appreciate that he gets it out-of-the-way early rather than using it at the point he needs it to introduce a story element later in the novel.

Innes’ story does not rely much on mystery elements or structures and it is striking how Petticate doesn’t set out intended to harm anyone. I think this is part of the reason that the character is ultimately quite a sympathetic and likable figure in spite of some of the things he does or contemplates doing in the course of the story. Part of it is that he is a deeply proud man who, in the best traditions of farce, frequently makes a fool of himself but attempts to retain his sense of dignity and control over his situation.

Take for instance his completion of his wife’s manuscript. Petticate is, we realize, quite a skillful and confident writer in his own right and more than up to the task of writing something quite readable. He has a decent grasp of the genre he is writing and knows enough of his wife’s style to be able to make a good approximation and yet he can’t help but try to improve on it out of a sense of his own pride. He soon realizes that even if he is successful at passing his work off as hers, he will have to spend the rest of his life writing material he detests which gives his situation a rather bittersweet feel.

I have complained before about Innes’ tendency for dense literary allusion and while there is certainly a bit of that present here, I was happy to find he did so with a much lighter touch than I had seen him use previously. Often these references are used to illustrate Petticate’s pretensions or to make sly digs at the publishing industry which Innes clearly knew so well by this point.

What impresses me most about the book though is that Innes pulls everything together to deliver an ending which feels comedic, fitting to the situation and gives us a clear resolution. This runs contrary to my usual experience of comedic mystery and crime fiction. Usually I find that those sorts of books will get off to a strong start but run out of steam as they near the end and the author feels the need to wrap things up. The New Sonia Wayward feels quite different, becoming increasingly funny and sharp as it winds towards its conclusion.

It is, in my opinion, one of the most entertaining inverted crime stories I have read so far and I would consider it more successful than other humorous inverted mysteries such as The Murder of My Aunt or Trial and Error. It is witty, cleverly plotted and I really enjoyed the manner of the ending which feels a perfect culmination to a very amusing tale. Highly recommended.

Blood on the Tracks edited by Martin Edwards

May 25, 2018
bloodonthetracks
Blood on the Tracks
Martin Edwards (ed)
Originally Published 2018

The latest British Library Crime Classics anthology is a collection of railway mysteries from the Golden Age of crime fiction. As always editor Martin Edwards has managed to find a mix of different styles and approaches from adventure-type stories to inverted crimes.

Most of the stories in the collection feel like good matches for the railway theme though the links in a couple of cases are somewhat tenuous. For instance The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man With No Face is one of the strongest stories in the collection based purely on entertainment value but probably does the least with the train theme.

Among the highlights of the collection for me were The Affair of the Corridor Express by Victor L. Whitechurch and The Case of Oscar Brodski by R. Austin Freeman. The other stories are generally of a high standard and most are paced pretty well with just a few falling short of the mark.

The Man with the Watches by Arthur Conan Doyle

A curious tale that features a seemingly impossible crime where the body of a passenger who hadn’t been seen on the train turns up in a compartment while the train is in motion while passengers who were there seemed to have vanished. I didn’t find it the most engagingly written story I have ever read by Doyle though it does have an interesting premise and I appreciated the construction of its solution.

The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel by L. T. Meade and Robert Eustace

In this story the detective is being consulted about a seemingly inexplicable death that has taken place in the early hours of the morning at a section of railway. The night watchman is found dead near the tracks with a severe blow to the back of his head. Suspicion has fallen on a young man with whom he was feuding yet the man recounting the tale does not believe he would be responsible though he cannot think of another explanation.

Arguably the story could have been a little more concisely told but the concept is quite clever and logical.

How He Cut His Stick by Matthias McDonnell Bodkin

This Dora Myrl adventure sees her consulted about the matter of a theft of several hundred pounds that was being transported from one bank office to another. The clerk responsible was supposedly travelling in the compartment alone but we are let in on the secret of how the robbery was managed. What remains a mystery however is how the thief managed to get off the moving train.

It’s quite an entertaining read and I did find Dora quite a likeable, lively heroine so I would be interested in reading some of her other adventures. The story though is not really fair play in that some of the details necessary are not fully described while the surprise identity of the villain will shock absolutely no one.

The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway by Baroness Orczy

The Old Man in the Corner tells Miss Polly Burton about a murder that had been committed on the Underground some time before where the Police were certain that they had identified the killer yet were unable to prove their case. He explains how the murder was actually carried out and why the Police came to their incorrect conclusion about the guilty party.

As with each of the previous stories in this collection, this is a tale recounted but the difference is that all of the action has taken part in the past, meaning that there is no movement or action in the story. To me that led to it dragging a little which is a shame as I thought the way the crime was executed was quite smart.

The Affair of the Corridor Express by Victor L. Whitechurch

A clever little tale that unfolds at a good clip. Mr. Hazell is approached by a school master who had been tasked with escorting a student by train after he was summoned by telegram. During the journey the student steps into the corridor and disappears. The master investigates and conducts a thorough search of the train but the child has vanished in spite of the train not having slowed down or stopped at all since the disappearance.

Whitechurch lays out the information very clearly and it is a pleasure to piece together what has happened. The explanation is quite simple and I appreciated the tightness of the resolution.

The Case of Oscar Brodski by R. Austin Freeman

Arguably the first inverted mystery written in English, The Case of Oscar Brodski is a story told in two parts of unequal length. The short opening identifies the murderer and explains the choices that he makes that lead to him taking a life and we see him staging the scene to try to mask his guilt. At the end of this section we are, in effect, challenged to imagine how he might possibly get caught.

The second part reveals that Dr. Thorndyke happened to be travelling on the railway line on the evening of the murder and became aware of the investigation into the death. While he does not have his full laboratory with him, he does have a small green case packed with smaller versions of many of his instruments and his systematically analyses the evidence to build up a picture of just what happened.

The investigation is compelling because the evidence is convincing and easy to follow. Thorndyke may not be the most dynamic investigator but it is interesting to see just how he works and his acknowledgement that his success was down in part to fortunate timing as had he been later on the scene much of the evidence would have not been there.

The Eighth Lamp by Roy Vickers

In this story a signalman agrees to take on the duties of performing final clean up on the platform of a circle line station at the end of each evening. As he extinguishes the last light however he sees a train running through the station without any lights and slowly a dread grows within him about fulfilling those duties.

The story feels tightly written, building a very effective sense of tension and drama. The reader may well guess where the story is headed but I think it is very well paced and packs a strong conclusion.

The Knight’s Cross Signal Problem by Ernest Bramah

A Max Carrados story in which the detective is consulted by his friend Mr. Carlyle about a case he is working on to try to determine who was responsible for a catastrophic train collision. The driver swears that he was following a signal while the signalman says that the driver ignored him.

Aspects of the solution are rather clever and the concept and themes of the story feels far more modern than you might expect given it was written in 1914. That being said, I did find the way the story was told a little dry.

The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face by Dorothy L Sayers

Lord Peter is travelling on a train when he hears about a strange case of a man found strangled on an isolated beach wearing just his bathing costume with nothing to identify him. There are just one set of footprints leading to the body though lest you think this an impossible crime story, Lord Peter solves that within a few paragraphs (it’s a good explanation too).

The story is quite cleverly constructed and has a fairly unconventional ending. Based on entertainment value it is one of the strongest stories in the collection though I might grumble and point out that the train setting is quite incidental and used in just a fraction of the story.

The Railway Carriage by F. Tennyson Jesse

Jesse’s final story to feature occult sleuth Solange Fontaine is really more of a rumination on themes of crime, redemption and capital punishment than it is a traditional detective story. I am not particularly fond of supernatural elements in my crime fiction so this one was perhaps not for me though I think the revelation at the end is quite chilling.

Mystery of the Slip-Coach by Sapper

A story in which a gambler and moneylender is found shot dead within a train carriage with a broken egg near them. This story can boast a devilishly clever solution but you may well wonder whether it could actually work in practice and why on earth anyone would conceive of such a ludicrous way of killing someone.

The Level Crossing by Freeman Wills Crofts

Having believed myself done with Freeman Wills Crofts’ inverted stories, I continue to be delighted by finding new short stories in these collections. This one is a good one, focusing on an accountancy clerk who is intending to kill a man on the railroad tracks.

The Adventure of the First-Class Carriage by Ronald Knox

A very acceptable Sherlockian pastiche which sees the detective consulted by the servant who voices her concerns that her master intends to commit suicide. Holmes travels down by train only to find that during the journey he disappears. What I do think it captures well is Doyle’s ability to set up a seemingly complicated scenario and then to have Holmes reduce it to something quite simple and understandable but while it entertains, there is nothing special to set it apart from the countless other Holmes pastiches.

Murder on the 7.16 by Michael Innes

Forget trying to solve this one yourself – its brevity means it is a little lacking in clues – but the story is a clever one, even if Appleby could never prove it with his evidence. The director of a film is found dead inside a reproduction train cabin on set.

The Coulman Handicap by Michael Gilbert

Detectives attempt to track a woman who they believe is involved in fencing stolen goods but manage to keep losing her. Unfortunately I found the premise less than thrilling and it struck me as one of the weaker entries in the collection.

Review copy provided through NetGalley. Blood on the Tracks is already available in the UK and will be published in the United States by Poisoned Pen Press on July 3, 2018.

There Came Both Mist and Snow by Michael Innes

December 20, 2017
ThereCameBothSnow
There Came Both Mist and Snow
Michael Innes
Originally Published 1940
Inspector Appleby #6
Preceded by The Secret Vanguard
Followed by Appleby on Ararat

Last month I had my first taste of Michael Innes’ work when I read Lament for a Maker, a novel that I found a thoroughly frustrating read because of Innes’ decision to write a third of it in Scots dialect. In spite of that though I thought the murder mystery plot was quite clever and so I resolved to give Innes another chance.

There Came Both Mist and Snow is a story set at Christmas in which a family gathers to celebrate the season together. We soon learn that members of the family harbor resentments towards each other and that nearly every member of the party have become fanatics about shooting revolvers on a range that has been constructed on the grounds.

I suspect you can guess what happens next.

A member of the party is found shot at a desk. Fortunately Inspector Appleby happens to arrive on the scene as a guest and is available to lend a hand in looking into the incident. Quickly he decides to recruit the narrator as a sort of reluctant Watson figure to his Holmes and they begin their investigation, soon realizing that the details of the crime may not be as straightforward as they first appeared.

While There Came Both Mist and Snow may not have been written in dialect, I found it to be similarly frustrating to read. The first ten chapters are particularly rough going and show signs of an author determined to let the reader know that they are Very Smart. Having now read a fair number of Golden Age novels, I am always prepared to hit the dictionary to lookup a word that may have fallen into disuse or check on one of those obscure classical allusions that every child would have picked up on in the 1920 and 30s but there are some words used here that would have been archaic or pretentious even then. Examples include valetudinarian, cicerone, hypnogogic and badinage.

Other examples of random, frustrating literariness include an extended scene in which characters take turns giving Shakespearian quotations relating to bells in a sort of impromptu contest which even the characters find tiresome. While I know there are readers who love this sort of dense, literary material, it really detracted from the experience for me.

What makes these sorts of things so frustrating is that Innes, when he forgets about being literary, is often quite an entertaining writer and comes up with some lovely, witty remarks or memorable turns of phrase. For instance, using ‘he had the mental habits of an industrious but unimaginative squirrel’ to describe a character. And once the shooting takes place the book does gain a much-needed sense of focus and direction.

The crime itself did at least hold some interest for me, in part because the victim is not killed by the gunshot which is something of a novelty in crime fiction and also because the circumstances of the shooting are not clear. Appleby’s job investigating this crime is complicated because it is not clear that the person shot was the intended victim and this does lead to some interesting theorizing and discussion about the different possible explanations there could be for what had happened.

This could have been the recipe for a memorable crime story but the elements just didn’t click for me. I think that may reflect that I simply didn’t find the cast of characters interesting or memorable. It often felt to me that the author was more interested in providing witty commentaries on their artistic inclinations and pretensions than in establishing them as credible killers. Appleby’s investigation seems to meander and the ending, with features several different theories being offered, dragged and disappointed.

Having now given Sir John Appleby and his creator two chances to impress me, I feel I can say with some confidence that these stories are simply not for me and I am unlikely to try any others. If you enjoy denser, more literary reads this may be of interest and worth investigation.

Review copy provided by NetGalley.

Lament for a Maker by Michael Innes

November 8, 2017
LamentforaMaker
Lament for a Maker
Michael Innes
Originally Published 1938
Inspector Appleby #3
Preceded by Hamlet, Revenge!
Followed by Stop Press

Ranald Guthrie, the laird of Erchany, is widely considered to be mad by those who live on his lands. He is a miser who lives in seclusion and his behavior seems to be increasingly erratic.

Late one night he is observed falling from the highest tower of his run-down castle and is found dead in the snow below. Did his madness drive him to commit suicide or was his death an act of murder?

If that seems like a very general summary of the novel it reflects how difficult it is to write about it without spoiling it heavily. The book is an oddity, being constructed of several sections written from the perspectives of different characters that often overlap in the events they depict, casting them in different lights as we learn more information.

This is an interesting approach in theory and its success will likely depend on how much you like the characterizations of the different narrators. I will certainly credit Innes for managing to create several distinctive voices and personalities for these narrators and I did appreciate that each takes on a slightly different style reflecting that character’s outlook.

Now, I should say at this point that I have never really cared for the idea of writing in dialect. I accept it when it happens and will certainly admit that it can convey a strong sense of place or character but it is also an unnecessary obstacle for the reader. In Lament for a Maker, the entire first third of the book is written in Scots dialect and although I lived for years in Glasgow and had a Scottish grandmother, I found deciphering the text to be a chore. It is not that it is impossible to decipher – Innes is good at situating dialect terms in a context where their meaning is generally quite clear – but it slows the pace down for anyone who is not familiar with the terms.

What makes this approach all the more frustrating is that while almost all of the characters involved in the story and narrating sections are Scottish, none of the other characters narrating do the same. It may have added mood and atmosphere but I think more selective use of Scots terms could have had the same effect and made the work more accessible.

Once we transition to the second narrator I found it much easier to engage with the work and to follow what was happening. The story’s structure mean it is constructed less like a traditional whodunit and more as a haunting, highly literate Gothic mystery told by a series of narrators who simply do not have the complete story. It is an interesting approach to take and I did find many of the answers provided to be quite surprising and satisfying.

Erchany is a compelling setting for a story and I did find the descriptions of its crumbling architecture and the infestation of rats to be extremely effective at setting the scenes and creating a haunting atmosphere. At times the narrative seems to skirt on the edge of the supernatural in some of the elements it employs though in the end the story is quite rational and driven by its characters’ psychology. I certainly would describe myself as being generally satisfied by the solution.

The book’s chief problem is that its stylistic and structural choices dominate the storytelling, creating a book that delivers plenty of atmosphere but which suffers from a lack of clear storytelling focus. I gather that this is not the typical sort of structure that Innes would create, so if you are curious to sample his work I would suggest that you may want to start with one of his other stories.

There is one other thing I should mention which is, again, an example of how this book is somewhat atypical. You may be puzzled how I managed to write over six hundred words without commenting on the story’s sleuth, Sir John Appleby, who would go on to appear in many other stories. The reason I haven’t commented on the character is that their role in this story is extremely minimal and, when he does appear, he hardly makes an impact.

The lack of a strong presence for a sleuth does not diminish the mystery or its solution. This is a clever tale and one that has a lot of personality. I am not sure, on reflection, whether I would have wanted this to be my first experience of Innes’ style if I had known how different it is from his other works. Still, it builds atmosphere masterfully and I did respect Innes’ skill at creating several distinct narrative voices. While I won’t be rushing to read any further works by Innes, I am sure I will return to him at some point.

Review copy provided through NetGalley.