Rating: 3/5
Review:
Not one of Innes's best
First published in 1937, this is Michael Innes's first
detective novel. This shows; it's certainly not a classic like Hamlet, Revenge!
or Christmas at Candleshoe and, although it's still enjoyable in parts, it does
begin to drag quite badly.
The plot, as may be imagined from the title, revolves around
the murder of the President of a fictitious Oxford
College. The circumstances are contrived, to say the
least, but Innes notes this with some dry remarks from his protagonists and to
begin with it's a decently put together
mystery as the suspects are narrowed down to a small number of College dons. Events move pretty slowly, so the chief
pleasure of this book is in Innes's prose and characterisations. There is a dry academic wit running through
the whole thing, with an ironic tone toward the practices of the College and
the conduct of its fellows – with all of which Innes himself was extremely
familiar, of course. This little extract
gives the idea; a rather stolid policeman is briefing the newly-arrived
Inspector Appleby from Scotland Yard:
"..the Dean; he's called the Reverend the Honourable
Tracy Deighton-Clerk.' (There was an indefinable salt in the inspector's mode
of conveying this information.)"
If you like that, you'll probably like the book – as I did
for quite a while. I found, though, that
half way through it began to pall and that witty prose but a very contrived and
complex plot being very slowly revealed wasn't really enough to carry the rest
of the book. There is a great deal of
very wordy consideration of the possibilities and despite some good interludes
(Appleby's interview with Empson the psychologist, for example) it became a bit
of a chore. It's an extremely intricate
puzzle dependent upon precise timings and physical locations – without a map or
plan to help – and whose dénouement is…well, implausible would be a kind way of
putting it. It's intended to be an
ironic academic take on the genre, I think, but it didn’t really work for me.
Having enjoyed the first half, I largely lost interest. I really struggled toward the end and was frankly relieved when I got
there. If you like this sort of Golden
Age detective fiction this is probably worth a read, but I can only give it a
very qualified recommendation.
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