A family affair [Import] [Paperback]

Michael INNES (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140033718
• ISBN-13: 978-0140033717
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,673,597 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

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Alternate title: A Family Affair, April 18, 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: 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!, June 20, 2007

By 

Avid Reader (Worcester, MA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

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.