Appleby at Allington [Import] [Paperback]

Michael Innes (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 176 pages
• Publisher: Penguin; First Thus edition (1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140031227
• ISBN-13: 978-0140031225
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,018,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alternate title: "Death by Water", April 28, 2004

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Appleby at Allington (Hardcover)

Retired Metropolitan Police Commissioner (New Scotland Yard), Sir John Appleby has a difficult and delicate task when he investigates various deaths that have taken place on the estate of his new neighbor, Owain Allington. For one thing, he is no longer officially a policeman. Colonel Tommy Pride is the local Chief Constable, and Appleby isn't sure whether he likes him. When he comes face-to-face with Colonel Pride at a church fête on Allington's estate, they bristle at each other distrustfully.

Then Appleby realizes that Colonel Pride is practically his double. They are both elderly men with a military bearing. Both are wearing tweeds and almost identical green trilbys. In fact: "If he and Pride...were to hunch themselves down on each side of a fireplace, the effect would be... that of ...twinned china dogs..."

In later novels, Sir John and Colonel Pride become good friends (see "Sheiks and Adders" (1982)), but in "Appleby at Allington" (1968) they are still wary of each other. Nevertheless, Pride supplies the police power necessary to tow a car and corpse out of their host's ornamental pond, and supplies Appleby with the information he needs to solve a series of mysterious deaths.

One might refer to Colonel Pride as Appleby's Lestrade, even to a bit of bumbling on the Chief Constable's part.

Michael Innes combines many themes that he has used in other Appleby mysteries: buried treasure; mysterious scientists; eccentric rectors; feuding relatives; and just a touch of spy story. Intellectual arrogance, as in many of Innes's novels is the villain's Achilles' heel.

Never, I warn you, never invite Sir John to dinner, to a church fête, or to your sound-and-light show on the castle parapet if murder is to follow.

Michael Innes (John Innes Mackintosh Stewart) was born in Edinburgh, educated at Oxford, and taught English in universities all over the world. His scholarly career includes works on Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad, but he is better known as the creator of Inspector John Appleby, whose exploits inspired a lasting vogue for literary (and literate) mysteries. If you'd like to experience Sir John at his donnish zenith, read "Hamlet, Revenge!" (1937).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Listening to the audio version of Appleby at Allington, November 14, 2010

By 

drkhimxz (Freehold, NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Appleby at Allington: An Inspector Appleby Mystery (Audible Audio Edition)

Michael Innes was in the front ranks of classic British mystery writers. Appleby was his detective hero, a Scotland Yard Man who, along the way, marries an artist. The books possess wit, irony, literacy and a humanistic core; often serious, but rarely seeking to penetrate to the truly disturbing levels which can be so off-putting when one is seeking an anodyne for one's own problems. In other words, he shares the approach of Christie, Sayers, Allingham, Marsh, and Crispin (among others). Their goal was to provide entertainment without true grit.

In this novel, a retired Sir John Appleby and his wife, are guests of the owner of a noble estate which has recently come into his hands. Ongoing is a traditional village festival held at the estate. The action focuses on the assembled family of the owner and the accidents which befall participants.

The 'Audible' audio-book version can be downloaded into the kindle directly from the Amazon website. The reader, Gordon Dulieu, does a top-notch job of creating a cast of characters who convey the essence of Innes with none of the difficulties Americans sometime have with the accents of British actors.

I cannot make a recommendation for the reader of the book; those who listen to this version will be pleased. Oh, yes, one caveat. This is not a long book nor a complicated one; however, the actor does savor the sound, the use of words, the intonations, of each character. If one is an impatient reader who has no desire to linger along the way, this may not be the book for you.