To those of you friends who have been waiting for me to re-emerge in this blog as one of your guides to classic mysteries - well, here I am sort of. So before moving ahead, let me explain a bit:
For more than a decade, I have relied on two increasingly aged computers when I write and publish Classic Mysteries. Without warning, both decided to take final leaps into the unknown, stubbornly refusing to do anything useful. OK, sez I, it's time to bite the bullet and get one replacement machine for both computers, sez I. Should be simple, sez I.
Uh huh.
That roaring sound you may hear is the gods laughing. They're enjoying themselves.
So, after nearly a month, I am comfortable enough with these programs that seem to have been designed to confuse an alien civilization (that would be you and me) to promise some new reviews...soon. I'll start with some features from the Classic Mysteries vault. I will publish, I hope, with some regularity, but my output will be sporadic for a few weeks until I'm comfortable with Windows 10. Spare me the lecture, please, about Apple's superiority - today, it's every bit as complicated as Windows 10.
Anyway, let's start with a complex but thoroughly enjoyable book by Michael Innes, his first, published in 1936, called Death at the President's Lodging. It's the book in which he first introduced readers to Detective Inspector John Appleby, that most erudite of investigators. Below, you'll find a transcript of my original audio review for the Classic Mysteries blog. Please do check back, as I hope against hope that this accursed computer will allow me to continue in the days and weeks ahead. I hope. As Schwarzenegger the Great said...I'll be back.
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There’s not much doubt that the president of St. Anthony’s College was a most unpleasant person, and that relations between the president and the senior scholars at the college were strained at best. Still, the murder of Dr. Josiah Umpleby in his residence at the school was quite a shock. Here’s how the author describes it:
The crime was at once intriguing and bizarre, efficient and theatrical. It was efficient because nobody knew who had committed it. And it was theatrical because of a macabre and unnecessary act of fantasy with which the criminal, it was quickly rumored, had accompanied his deed.
That nicely sums up the central problem to be found in the first mystery by Michael Innes. It is called Death at the President’s Lodging.
Michael Innes wrote a great many fine mysteries over the course of a career that spanned half a century. Death at the President’s Lodging was his first novel, published in 1936, introducing Detective Inspector John Appleby, who appeared in many of Innes’s books over the next fifty years, rising through the ranks and eventually becoming Commissioner of Metropolitan Police before retiring to the family estate (where he continued to solve the occasional murder).
In his first recorded case, Appleby finds himself assigned to investigate a murder at Saint Anthony’s College, a fictional institution which the author assures us is located roughly midway between the ancient (and real) university towns of Oxford and Cambridge. The president of Saint Anthony’s, Dr. Josiah Umpleby, has been shot to death in his residence, which is one of the college buildings. What is more, the residence is located in a portion of the campus which is locked at night – when the murder was committed – and only a handful of senior scholars have keys. So the field of suspects would appear to be limited – although the scholars themselves have a great deal of difficulty persuading themselves that one of them must have committed the murder.
And it is also true that the murder itself was surrounded by most unusual circumstances – not least of which is the fact that the President’s body is surrounded by human bones, scattered across the floor of his study. There are a great many clues – too many of them perhaps, because it is extremely difficult to find a scholar with a motive for murder who would, in fact, have had the opportunity to commit the murder.
It is up to Appleby, of course, to get everything sorted out. And I have to warn you that the ultimate solution, when Appleby explains it, is likely to induce dizziness. But it is eminently satisfying.
And through it all are the wonderful literary touches which Michael Innes always brought to his works – especially the earliest of the books. All of Innes’s books are written with a good deal of wit and erudition; Appleby (and some of the other characters) are given to quoting obscure poets and playwrights, and the author’s third person narration is wonderful at evoking the atmosphere of this scholarly institution where murder has interrupted the daily routines of scholarship.
Listen, for example, to what Innes has to say about many of the resident academics (and remember that he too had a successful career as a don at a number of universities, including Oxford):
They loll deep in what economists call a “timelag.” They teach out-moded subjects by exploded methods. They remain obstinately unconvinced of the necessity of the modern amenities either for themselves, their wives or their children. Only recently, indeed, did they discover wives and children. Only yesterday did they discover baths. Only today, despite much undergraduate example, are they beginning to discover the motorcar.
I think that's fairly indicative of Michael Innes’s wit at work. You’ll find a lot of that going on – along with a remarkably clever mystery and rather amazing solution – in Death at the President’s Lodging – which was also published in the U. S. as Seven Suspects. I think you’ll enjoy it!
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If you'd like to listen to the recording of the review, please click here.