Over a period of twenty years, a series of highly elaborate art hoaxes have been perpetrated at carefully time intervals, and in each case, the victim has a very good reason for keeping quiet. Inspector Appleby's interest is kindled by an amusing dinner-party anecdote - when he enlists the help of his wife and son, the ensuing investigation is truly a family affair. The scenes shift swiftly between glorious stately homes and the not-so-glorious art gallery of the irrepressibly dubious Hildebert Braunkopf.
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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.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Alternate title: A Family Affair,
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: Family Affair (Hardcover)
The art thefts are as freakish as they are profitable. In the first known instance, someone impersonates a Very Distinguished Royal personage who is known to accept gifts from her hosts--a painting or a piece of mine host's bric-a-brac that she fancies would look charming in her own palace: in this case, it is an early Siennese Madonna that enchants her. The gift is graciously offered and received, but when the backwoods peer learns that his visiting Royal was a fake, he is too embarrassed to pursue the matter.Over the course of fifteen years, similiarly cunning thefts occur, and each time the victim is too mortified to pursue the matter. Sir John Appleby was the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police (New Scotland Yard) when a couple of the incidents were reported, but they were underneath his radar screen at the time. Now he is retired and his wife is trying to turn him into a horticulturist. When he visits his son at Oxford, Appleby hears the story of bogus Royal from one of Bobby's classmates and decides to do a quiet investigation of his own. He soon encounters peers, art dealers, and business magnates who have been touched up by the same audacious thief, who never uses the same ploy twice but always succeeds in humiliating his victims into silence. Sir John decides to set up a sting of his own. "A Family Affair" (1969), also known as "Picture of Guilt" is an exquisitely literate satire as well as a satisfying mystery. Michael Innes focuses his laser wit on subjects as various as Oxford social clubs, rugby, snobbish peers, and acquisitive Royals. As you might guess from the title, Sir John's wife and son are also involved in the case of the cunning art thief.
0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Boring!,
By Avid Reader (Worcester, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Family Affair (Inspector Appleby Mysteries) (Paperback)
I tried, I really tried to get into this book. I made it more than half way and decided I didn't care who pulled all these hoaxes. It was so bad, I removed all the other Innes books from my shopping cart.
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