Appleby at Allington [Hardcover]

Michael Innes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1968

Sir John Appleby dines one evening at Allington Park, the Georgian home of his acquaintance Owain Allington, who is new to the area. His curiosity is aroused when Allington mentions his nephew and heir to the estate, Martin Allington, whose name Appleby recognises. The evening comes to an end but just as Appleby is leaving, they find a dead man - electrocuted in the son et lumi¿re box which had been installed in the grounds.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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 out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Victor Gollancz Ltd; 1st edition (June 1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0575000783
• ISBN-13: 978-0575000780
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,893,576 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.