The Ampersand Papers (Penguin crime fiction) [Paperback]

Michael Innes (Author)

Book Description

Series: Penguin crime fiction | Publication Date: October 30, 1980

While Appleby is strolling along a Cornish beach, he narrowly escapes being struck by a body falling down a cliff. The body is that of Dr Sutch, an archivist, and he has fallen from the North Tower of Treskinnick Castle, home of Lord Ampersand. Two possible motivations present themselves to Appleby - the Ampersand gold, treasure from an Armada galleon; and the Ampersand papers, valuable family documents that have associations with Wordsworth and Shelley.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Born in Edinburgh in 1906, the son of the city's Director of Education, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart wrote a highly successful series of mystery stories under the pseudonym Michael Innes. Innes was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, where he was presented with the Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize and named a Bishop Frazer's scholar. After graduation he went to Vienna, to study Freudian psychoanalysis for a year and following his first book, an edition of Florio's translation of Montaigne, was offered a lectureship at the University of Leeds. In 1932 he married Margaret Hardwick, a doctor, and they subsequently had five children including Angus, also a novelist. The year 1936 saw Innes as Professor of English at the University of Adelaide, during which tenure he wrote his first mystery story, 'Death at the President's Lodging'. With his second, 'Hamlet Revenge', Innes firmly established his reputation as a highly entertaining and cultivated writer. After the end of World War II, Innes returned to the UK and spent two years at Queen's University, Belfast where in 1949 he wrote the 'Journeying Boy', a novel notable for the richly comedic use of an Irish setting. He then settled down as a Reader in English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, from which he retired in 1973. His most famous character is 'John Appleby', who inspired a penchant for donnish detective fiction that lasts to this day. Innes's other well-known character is 'Honeybath', the painter and rather reluctant detective, who first appeared in 1975 in 'The Mysterious Commission'. The last novel, 'Appleby and the Ospreys', was published in 1986, some eight years before his death in 1994. 'A master - he constructs a plot that twists and turns like an electric eel: it gives you shock upon shock and you cannot let go.' - Times Literary Supplement. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 30, 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140051635
• ISBN-13: 978-0140051636
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,355,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Urbane, elderly Appleby, November 2, 2001

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ampersand Papers (Hardcover)

Sir John Appleby, the detective-hero of Michael Innes's mysteries is knighted, married, and retired from his position as Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard in "The Ampersand Papers (1978)." In fact, one cheeky young constable refers to him as `well-preserved.'

Sir John enters the noble Diggitt family's mystery at midpoint while strolling beneath the walls of their Treskinnick Castle. The reader has already been introduced to the owner of the castle, Lord Ampersand, his eccentric and quarrelsome family, and his equally eccentric staff. Sir John receives his first introduction to the family and their quarrels as a body hurtles down from the North Tower and lands at his feet.

It is the body of Dr. Sutch, an archivist who has been hired to search for the missing Ampersand family papers, valuable documents that could contain letters from the Romantic poets, Shelley and Byron, and possibly a lost play by Coleridge. Dr. Sutch has also been searching (on the sly) for the legendary Ampersand treasure that was supposedly looted from a wrecked Spanish galleon during the reign of Elizabeth I.

"The Ampersand Papers" twists and turns through many ornate plot lines involving not one, but two missing treasures, a shady archivist, an equally shady speleologist named Cave, and an inbred, upper-class family with a fondness for practical jokes and multi-generational feuds.

The author, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (pseudonym Michael Innes) was born in 1906 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, and his mysteries reflect both his scholarship, and the year he spent in Vienna, studying Freudian psychoanalysis.

There are few dialogues in the Appleby novels that are more subtle and psychologically revealing than the one between Sir John and Lady Ampersand on the subject of her son and her son's heir. Innes always displays a talent for playful, erudite dialogue, but in this particular scene his readers must delve below the superficial chat about Lady Ampersand's jigsaw puzzle in order discover which of two suspects is really capable of murder.

Even though the mystery seems overly complicated, the psychological portraits are vintage Innes, and each of the conspirators is very satisfyingly hoisted on his or her own petard by novel's end.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Typical Late Innes, July 13, 2003

By 

hacklehorn - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Ampersand Papers (Inspector Appleby Mystery S.) (Paperback)

The mixture of literary manuscripts, piratical treasure and noble eccentrics makes this typical late Innes, with far more speculation than either detection or action as Appleby investigates the fall of an archivist from the North Tower onto his head (and nearly on A.'s). Although theories of "murder" abound, this turns out to be as ill-founded a belief as that in either of the treasures.

5.0 out of 5 stars Urbane, elderly Appleby, January 1, 2011

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Ampersand Papers (Hardcover)

Sir John Appleby, the detective-hero of Michael Innes's mysteries is knighted, married, and retired from his position as Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard in "The Ampersand Papers (1978)." In fact, one cheeky young constable refers to him as `well-preserved.'

Sir John enters the noble Diggitt family's mystery at midpoint while strolling beneath the walls of their Treskinnick Castle. The reader has already been introduced to the owner of the castle, Lord Ampersand, his eccentric and quarrelsome family, and his equally eccentric staff. Sir John receives his first introduction to the family and their quarrels as a body hurtles down from the North Tower and lands at his feet.

It is the body of Dr. Sutch, an archivist who has been hired to search for the missing Ampersand family papers, valuable documents that could contain letters from the Romantic poets, Shelley and Byron, and possibly a lost play by Coleridge. Dr. Sutch has also been searching (on the sly) for the legendary Ampersand treasure that was supposedly looted from a wrecked Spanish galleon during the reign of Elizabeth I.

"The Ampersand Papers" twists and turns through many ornate plot lines involving not one, but two missing treasures, a shady archivist, an equally shady speleologist named Cave, and an inbred, upper-class family with a fondness for practical jokes and multi-generational feuds.

The author, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (pseudonym Michael Innes) was born in 1906 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, and his mysteries reflect both his scholarship, and the year he spent in Vienna, studying Freudian psychoanalysis.

There are few dialogues in the Appleby novels that are more subtle and psychologically revealing than the one between Sir John and Lady Ampersand on the subject of her son and her son's heir. Innes always displays a talent for playful, erudite dialogue, but in this particular scene his readers must delve below the superficial chat about Lady Ampersand's jigsaw puzzle in order discover which of two suspects is really capable of murder.

Even though the mystery seems overly complicated, the psychological portraits are vintage Innes, and each of the conspirators is very satisfyingly hoisted on his or her own petard by novel's end.