The Long Farewell (Inspector Appleby Mystery S.) [Paperback]

Michael Innes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2001 | Series: Inspector Appleby Mystery S.

Lewis Packford, the great Shakespearean scholar, was thought to have discovered a book annotated by the Bard - but there is no trace of this valuable object when Packford apparently commits suicide. Sir John Appleby finds a mixed bag of suspects at the dead man's house, who might all have a good motive for murder. The scholars and bibliophiles who were present might have been tempted by the precious document in Packford's possession. And Appleby discovers that Packford had two secret marriages, and that both of these women were at the house at the time of his death.

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: House of Stratus (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842327429
• ISBN-13: 978-1842327425
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,208,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare, farce, and murder, March 3, 2004

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 Long Farewell (Gollancz vintage detection) (Hardcover)

Sex rarely rears its oh-so-indiscreet head in mysteries starring Sir John Appleby, Michael Innes's donnish detective. When it does, it is usually adorned in the lineaments of farce, as is the case in "The Long Farewell" (1958).

Lewis Packford, the great Shakespearean scholar, has come to marriage late in his bookish career, and it has enchanted him so thoroughly that he goes to the altar twice---without an intervening divorce. When both wives simultaneously descend upon Urchins, his ancestral mansion, he appears to take the easy way out of his bigamous dilemma. He is found in his library (most of Innes's corpses are to be found in libraries) with a bullet through his head, a revolver in his hand, and a suicide note with the ink still wet, by his side.

Most appropriately, the suicide note is a quotation from the Bard--not Othello's "Farewell, farewell...why did I marry," as you might expect. It is rather "Farewell, a long farewell..." from Cardinal Wolsey's soliloquy in Shakespeare's "King Henry the VIII" (Act III, Scene 2).

Packford had been dropping hints about the discovery of a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript, annotated by Shakespeare himself, as the framework for his "Othello," but this priceless object seems to have disappeared from the scholar's library upon his death.

Sir John Appleby finds it difficult to believe that Packford committed suicide (he thinks the suicide note is a bit uninventive for such a brilliant scholar), so he invites himself up to Urchins where he is introduced to the two angry wives, plus a house party of scholars and bibliophiles who were present at the time of death.

Might the missing manuscript be connected with Packford's death? Did one of his wives take it upon herself to murder the bigamous bibliophile? Or did Packford really commit suicide?

Sir John weighs in to another notable mixture of crime and scholarship, English eccentrics and American millionaires, farce, murder, and crumbling gothic masonry. "The Long Farewell" is a delightful mystery and by the time the body count reached three, even I had fingered the correct suspect.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Death of a Shakespeare scholar, July 3, 2006

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 Long Farewell (A Sir John Appleby Mystery Ser.) (Paperback)

Sex rarely rears its oh-so-indiscreet head in mysteries starring Sir John Appleby, Michael Innes's donnish detective. When it does, it is usually adorned in the lineaments of farce, as is the case in "The Long Farewell" (1958).

Lewis Packford, the great Shakespearean scholar, has come to marriage late in his bookish career, and it has enchanted him so thoroughly that he goes to the altar twice---without an intervening divorce. When both wives simultaneously descend upon Urchins, his ancestral mansion, he appears to take the easy way out of his bigamous dilemma. He is found in his library (most of Innes's corpses are to be found in libraries) with a bullet through his head, a revolver in his hand, and a suicide note with the ink still wet, by his side.

Most appropriately, the suicide note is a quotation from the Bard--not Othello's "Farewell, farewell...why did I marry," as you might expect. It is rather "Farewell, a long farewell..." from Cardinal Wolsey's soliloquy in Shakespeare's "King Henry the VIII" (Act III, Scene 2).

Packford had been dropping hints about the discovery of a sixteenth-century Italian manuscript, annotated by Shakespeare himself, as the framework for his "Othello," but this priceless object seems to have disappeared from the scholar's library upon his death.

Sir John Appleby finds it difficult to believe that Packford committed suicide (he thinks the suicide note is a bit uninventive for such a brilliant scholar), so he invites himself up to Urchins where he is introduced to the two angry wives, plus a house party of scholars and bibliophiles who were present at the time of death.

Might the missing manuscript be connected with Packford's death? Did one of his wives take it upon herself to murder the bigamous bibliophile? Or did Packford really commit suicide?

Sir John weighs in to another notable mixture of crime and scholarship, English eccentrics and American millionaires, farce, murder, and crumbling gothic masonry. "The Long Farewell" is a delightful mystery and by the time the body count reached three, even I had fingered the correct suspect.