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Picture of Guilt (Inspector Appleby Mystery)

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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 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.

"Picture of Guilt," also known as "A Family Affair" (1969) 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 alternate title, Sir John's wife and son are also involved in the case of the cunning art thief.

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 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.

"Picture of Guilt" (1969), also known as "A Family Affair" 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 alternate title, Sir John's wife and son are also involved in the case of the cunning art thief.