Rating: 4/5
Review:
Still a very good novel
I have read Hamlet, Revenge! A number of times over the
years and I still get a lot of pleasure from it. It was first published in 1937, which shows
very plainly in the language, the assumptions about the reader's literary knowledge
and the attitudes. It's a period piece,
in other words, and a very good one.
The plot hinges on a murder committed during a production of
Hamlet in a large country house. The
redoubtable Inspector Appleby investigates as possibilities of pre-war espionage
and the inevitable personal motives emerge.
It is, like all Innes's plots, dense and intricate, and depends upon
minutiae of sightlines in a 16th-Century theatre, a pretty detailed
knowledge of Hamlet and so on. I rather
like this, and Innes's enjoyable prose and dry wit add to the pleasure –
including one wonderfully amusing and memorable, if wholly absurd, escape from
pursuit in a formal garden.
This isn't a light read and does require more intellectual
engagement than many Golden Age detective novels, but it's still very rewarding
and is regarded by many as a classic of the genre. Recommended.
(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)
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