What Happened at Hazelwood [Paperback]

Michael Innes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2001

The Simney family, of Hazlewood Hall, have a dubious history. Sir George Simney, who was travelling in Australia before the baronetcy fell to him, sleeps with a shotgun by his side. When he is found dead in the library, the Reverend Adrian Deamer will not rest until he has discovered who is responsible. This is an absorbing tale narrated by Simney's widow, Nicolette, and by young Harold, who has just joined the CID.

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: 248 pages
• Publisher: House of Stratus (January 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842327593
• ISBN-13: 978-1842327593
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 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: #1,500,621 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

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands", February 21, 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: What Happened at Hazelwood (Hardcover)

"What Happened at Hazelwood" (1946) is notable in that it is a mystery that does not feature Michael Innes's most famous detective, Sir John Appleby, but rather Appleby's successor at New Scotland Yard, Detective-Inspector Thomas Cadover. The new Inspector is a bit of a dry stick compared to the irrepressible Appleby---he refers to his predecessor as 'the wayward Appleby'---but Cadover is slowly acquiring Appleby's habit of uttering mystifying non sequiturs (at least they seem like non sequiturs at the time of utterance). He has also acquired his predecessor's yellow Bentley (which surprised me, because I'm positive Appleby was still driving it after he retired--see "Appleby's Other Story"), and a young Watson named Harold, who narrates the middle portion of this mystery.

The narrator for Parts I and III is Nicolette, former actress and wife of the soon-to-be-deceased Sir George Simney, who is murdered in the traditional manner, by a blunt object in his own library at midnight, during a snowstorm, while his butler is lurking just outside the library door.

Sir George is one of this author's most unsavoury baronets. He tormented his relatives, slept with a shotgun by his side, seduced half the countryside, and abused his beautiful wife. Needless to say, he had many enemies, including the local rector and, of course, his own flesh-and-blood. In fact Nicolette is surprised to learn that her husband has more relatives than she bargained for, when three Australian Simneys show up one evening while the British members of the family are hurling imprecations and sherry round the dinner table.

Twenty-seven hours later, after mysterious references to that 'Dismal Swamp' business, and the seduction of one of his new and unwelcome guests, Sir George is dead.

Now the redoubtable Detective-Inspector Cadover and his assistant, Harold must sort through quite a long list of suspects, including all of the family members at Hazelwood, and must also track down the suspect who left a trail of footprints in the snow outside the window of the deceased's library. Another mystery to be solved is the identity of the lurker behind the Temple of Diana, where Sir George was busy seducing his Australian guest's wife (Hint: it wasn't her husband).

This is a very elegant mystery, with the exception of the bad baronet himself, and I think you will find it easy to forgive Innes's unlikely murderer once you learn the full truth of "What Happened at Hazelwood."

5.0 out of 5 stars A mystery starring Appleby's successor, July 15, 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: What Happened at Hazelwood (Hardcover)

"What Happened at Hazelwood" (1946) is notable in that it is a mystery that does not feature Michael Innes's most famous detective, Sir John Appleby, but rather Appleby's successor at New Scotland Yard, Detective-Inspector Thomas Cadover. The new Inspector is a bit of a dry stick compared to the irrepressible Appleby---he refers to his predecessor as `the wayward Appleby'---but Cadover is slowly acquiring Appleby's habit of uttering mystifying non sequiturs (at least they seem like non sequiturs at the time of utterance). He has also acquired his predecessor's yellow Bentley (which surprised me, because I'm positive Appleby was still driving it after he retired--see "Appleby's Other Story"), and a young Watson named Harold, who narrates the middle portion of this mystery.

The narrator for Parts I and III is Nicolette, former actress and wife of the soon-to-be-deceased Sir George Simney, who is murdered in the traditional manner, by a blunt object in his own library at midnight, during a snowstorm, with his butler is lurking just outside the library door.

Sir George is one of this author's most unsavoury baronets. He tormented his relatives, slept with a shotgun by his side, seduced half the countryside, and abused his beautiful wife. Needless to say, he had many enemies, including the local rector and, of course, his own flesh-and-blood. In fact Nicolette is surprised to learn that her husband has more relatives than she bargained for, when three Australians Simneys show up one evening while the British members of the family are hurling imprecations and sherry round the dinner table.

Twenty-seven hours later, after mysterious references to that 'Dismal Swamp' business, and the seduction of one of his new and unwelcome guests, Sir George is dead.

Now the redoubtable Detective-Inspector Cadover and his assistant, Harold must sort through quite a long list of suspects, including all of the family members at Hazelwood, and also track down the suspect who left a trail of footprints in the snow outside the window of the deceased's library---not to mention discovering identity of the mysterious lurker behind the Temple of Diana when Sir George was busy seducing his Australian guest's wife.

This is a very elegant mystery, with the exception of the bad baronet himself, and I think you will find it easy to forgive Innes's unlikely murderer once you learn the full truth of "What Happened at Hazelwood."