From London Far (Inspector Appleby Mystery S.) [Paperback]

Michael Innes (Author)

Book Description

Series: Inspector Appleby Mystery S. | Publication Date: September 23, 2008

As Meredith, an academic, stands in a Bloomsbury tobacconist waiting for his two ounces of tobacco, he murmurs a verse of 'London, a Poem' and is astounded when a trap door opens into the London Catacombs, bringing him face to face with the Horton Venus, by Titian. From then on he is trapped in a maze of the illicit art trade, in the company of the redoubtable Jane Halliwell.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Published in 1978 and 1946, respectively, these offer a double dose of British mystery by the popular Innes. Each title contains thievery, betrayal, intrigue, and a touch of murder for good measure. Both will be popular in large mystery collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: House of Stratus (September 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842327348
• ISBN-13: 978-1842327340
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #572,057 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comedy crossed with Buchan, July 13, 2003

By 

hacklehorn - See all my reviews

This review is from: From London Far (Classic Crime) (Mass Market Paperback)

Among Innes's large and highly uneven output, this most gleeful and exuberant "thriller" stands out as one of his clearest triumphs. It is the diverting story of an innocent (middle-aged scholar named Meredith) abroad, plunged into murder (one of which he commits, the other he instigates) and crime (the doings of the International Society for the Diffusion of Cultural Objects), against a picturesque backdrop of warehouse, ruined castle and Highland moor, and a lunatic nouveau riche connoisseur's American mansion. Dialogue splendid, and the humour makes this Innes's funniest book: not only mild academic jests, but superb farce, largely provided by the pick of the gallery of certifiable lunatics: an endearing psychologist who is as mad as his patients (whom he believes have abducted him by furniture van to be instructed in sexology), who begins by believing that the furniture vans that keep following him are psychosexual hallucinations; to keep himself sane, he refuses to believe in any of the adventures that ensue when he is kidnapped. Now there's an idea for modern drama!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Also titled "The Unsuspected Chasm", May 30, 2010

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: From London Far (Inspector Appleby Mystery S.) (Paperback)

"From London Far" is a superior mystery-thriller with a couple of hair-raising chase scenes, but eventually it skids off into a surreal deep end. This novel was published in 1946, and maybe Innes felt that his British audience would be entertained by the machinations of an eccentric American billionaire. Almost all of his mysteries feature peculiar sideshows: usually a farcical character or a setting that is just out of true. In this particular mystery, certain characters (most especially, a revolting psychiatrist named Higbed), plot lines, and the final setting are seen through a glass that distorts reality even more grotesquely than is usual for this genre.

This book's premise that a group called the `International Society for the Diffusion of Cultural Objects' (ISDCO) is stealing all of Europe's great art during and after the chaos of World War II is certainly plausible . Its unlikely hero, Richard Meredith is a middle-aged philologist, who is the author of "a sound, if conservative, edition of Martial...[and] an authority on the Latin epigrammatists and satirists in general."

One afternoon, Meredith wanders into a tobacco shop near the British Museum, utters what sounds to its proprietor like a secret password, and is ushered into an underground cavern that is chock-full of villains and stolen art. Once he spots a stolen Vermeer and realizes his predicament, our Latin scholar assumes the identity of a particularly cold-blooded art thief named Birdsong (Vogelsang), rescues a maiden in distress, shoots the real Vogelsang, and doggedly pursues ISDCO to its hidden lairs in Scotland and America.

Michael Innes (a pseudonym for J.I.M. Stewart) was born and educated in Edinburgh, and some of his finest mysteries are set in Scotland, e.g. "Lament for a Maker" and "The Man from the Sea." "From London Far" lingers in the vast ruins of a Scottish castle inhabited by two ancient sisters, who might have been more at home in "Macbeth," stirring unsuspecting lizards into bubbling cauldrons. In fact, the eldest persists in hearing Viking ships rowing stealthily into the castle's loch:

"Her voice sank till it was barely audible. `The Viking ships. The ships of Olaf the White. They are rowing with muffled oar. But--hark!--the rowlocks creak as they swing."

The real source of the creaking is much more sinister than a ghostly longship.

My one wish is that Innes had not removed his characters from Scotland to a final denouement in a mechanized Beverly Hillbilly mansion of mansions, where we finally learn why the revolting Higbed has been kidnapped by the art thieves. "From London Far" is still very much worth savoring, even though Inspector Appleby fans will be disappointed to learn that their favorite detective does not make an appearance in this mystery-thriller.

5.0 out of 5 stars Also titled "The Unsuspected Chasm", November 30, 2009

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: From London Far (Paperback)

"From London Far" is a superior mystery-thriller with a couple of hair-raising chase scenes, but eventually it skids off into a surreal deep end. This novel was published in 1946, and maybe Innes felt that his British audience would be entertained by the machinations of an eccentric American billionaire. Almost all of his mysteries feature peculiar sideshows: usually a farcical character or a setting that is just out of true. In this particular mystery, certain characters (most especially, a revolting psychiatrist named Higbed), plot lines, and the final setting are seen through a glass that distorts reality even more grotesquely than is usual for this genre (barring the James Bond novels and their multitudinous rip-offs.)

This book's premise that a group called the `International Society for the Diffusion of Cultural Objects' (ISDCO) is stealing all of Europe's great art during and after the chaos of World War II is certainly plausible. Its unlikely hero, Richard Meredith is a middle-aged philologist, who is the author of "a sound, if conservative, edition of Martial...[and] an authority on the Latin epigrammatists and satirists in general."

One afternoon, Meredith wanders into a tobacco shop near the British Museum, utters what sounds to its proprietor like a secret password, and is ushered into an underground cavern that is chock-full of villains and stolen art. Once he spots a stolen Titian and realizes his predicament, our Latin scholar assumes the identity of a particularly cold-blooded art thief named Birdsong (Vogelsang), rescues a maiden in distress, shoots the real Vogelsang, and doggedly pursues ISDCO to its hidden lairs in Scotland and America.

Michael Innes (a pseudonym for J.I.M. Stewart) was born and educated in Edinburgh, and some of his finest mysteries are set in Scotland, e.g. Lament for a Maker (Inspector Appleby Mystery) and The Man from the Sea: A Classic British Mystery. "From London Far" lingers in the vast ruins of a Scottish castle inhabited by two ancient sisters, who might have been more at home in Macbeth: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare (Cambridge Library Collection - Literary Studies), stirring unsuspecting amphibians into bubbling cauldrons. In fact, the eldest persists in hearing Viking ships rowing stealthily into the castle's loch:

"Her voice sank till it was barely audible. `The Viking ships. The ships of Olaf the White. They are rowing with muffled oar. But--hark!--the rowlocks creak as they swing.'"

The real source of the creaking is much more sinister than a ghostly longship.

My one wish is that Innes had not removed his characters from Scotland to a final denouement in a mechanized Beverly Hillbilly mansion of mansions, where we finally learn why the revolting Higbed has been kidnapped by the art thieves. "From London Far" is still very much worth savoring, even though Inspector Appleby fans will be disappointed to learn that their favorite detective does not make an appearance in this mystery-thriller.