Wed 18 Jul 2018
MICHAEL INNES – Seven Suspects. Berkley F1158, paperback reprint, November 1965. US hardcover edition: Dodd Mead, 1937. First published in the UK as Death at the President’s Lodging, Victor Gollancz, hardcover, 1936. [Other US paperback editions include: Dolphin, 1962; Penguin, 1984.]
Without a doubt, in terms of intelligence and general all-around erudition, Michael Innes has to be ranked in the top five mystery writers of all time. (I don’t know how you’d put this to a test, but I can think of only a handful I might start comparing him to, and the funny thing is, they’re all English.)
In the beginning, though, he seems to have been too intellectual for his own good. Seven Suspects was his first mystery novel, and in spite of the great start and the fine setup, to get through the middle portion of the book involves some very tough slogging, to use the vernacular, at least by contemporary standards.
The great start? Well, it’s not quite a locked room mystery, but it’s the next best thing. And speaking of which, what this (Berkley) edition of the novel needs, more than anything else, is a map, a map of St. Anthony’s College, where the President is found shot to death in his Lodging, with gardens and walls and locked doors all around, and only a limited number of keys with which to open them.
There could hardly be a greater contrast between the two officers of the law involved, deliberately so. The local copper is the prosaic Inspector Dodd, far more comfortable with tracking down a gang of burglars than a shrewd and wily killer who leaves a puzzling trail of enigmatic clues behind.
On the other hand, the nimble-witted Inspector John Appleby, sent down quickly by Scotland Yard, is perfect for dealing with the retinue of eccentric academics who never seem to speak before thinking twice (or thrice) about the implications of what they are about to utter.
Being a native Midwesterner by birth, American style, I have to confess that some of the doings in the aforementioned middle portion of the book, carried out by a small company of carefree undergraduates of the college, were intended to be funny, but not to me. To the average Londoner at the time, they probably were — and maybe even hilarious. (It took me a chapter or two of such antics, but I did finally get into the spirit of things.)
What is also true, as I came to realize toward the end of the book, is that not a single female appears who has a speaking part, and only one who’s in the book at all has more than a servant’s role. (In all truthfulness, it took Innes’s own observation of this patricluar fact for me to notice. Sometimes I really am slow.)
And so, this combination of dry academic humor and a decidedly noticeable lack of authorial interest in Appleby the person — that is to say his personal life, his worries and concerns — it all makes this Golden Age gem far out of the mainstream of the mystery world today.
But gem it is. There are some flaws — it’s a wholly artificial staging, of course — but the comings and goings the night of the murder, who did what when, and who saw what and who didn’t, whose voice that was, and whose it wasn’t, it’s a eye-popper and a mind-blower, and my head is still spinning.
A gem that needs some polishing, then, but for an academic exercise in the pure pleasure of plotting, very very few of the thousands of mysteries ever published come even close to topping this one.
NOTE: I started reading this book last night and got through the first chapter and part of the second before saying to myself, “this story is awfully familiar. I think I’ve read it before.”
I did some checking, and yes, not only had I read it before, I’d written a review of it and eventually posted that review on this blog. This is a re-run, in other words, perhaps the only the second time I’ve done so. The original post was almost ten years ago, so if you remember it, your memory is obviously a lot better than mine.
July 19th, 2018 at 1:54 pm
This one is a splendid detective puzzle, but not as sheerly entertaining as later Innes novels where he mixed that dry academic wit with a puckish sense of humor and often Buchanesque or near slapstick action.
Like Nicholas Blake and John Dickson Carr Innes wasn’t afraid of a bit of melodrama or a bit of farce (ONE MAN SHOW features a chase right out of an Ealing Comedy by way of the Keystone Cops).
App;eby grows over the years into a fairly interesting character so eventually I came to see him in my minds eye as Dennis Price (KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS), Patrick Mcnee, or Denholm Elliot, actors who specialized in a sort of dry wit and sly intelligence.
For some reason I tend to put Innes and Blake together with Philip Macdonald and Rhode as the male equivalent of Christie, Allingham, Marsh, and Sayers, and even in that company Innes and Appleby score high, especially for the wit and intelligence.
I really only got into Innes from reading the thrillers such as THE JOURNEYING BOY or OPERATION PAX, but once I read ONE MAN SHOW I moved to the more cerebral adventures and was hooked, and many of the later adventures are attractively lean and compact.
I’m not sure Innes is for everyone, even fans of Blake might find him a bit academic (no surprise as Stewart is an Oxford Don), but he remains one of the greats of the Golden Age who continued a long successful career long past the heyday of that era still scoring successes at a time of life when many writers were struggling to keep up the quality and inventiveness.
Of Innes I think I can honestly say there are no bad books, perhaps lesser efforts. but I haven’t read one that didn’t entertain in terms of wit or mystery, and the later books are often nicely playful with Appleby playing straight man to a sharply drawn portrait of eccentrics run wild.
July 19th, 2018 at 3:50 pm
I have not read any of Innes’s thrillers and less than half of his “traditional†detective novels, some of which are far from traditional. As I recall, he stretched the limits a time or two.
I hoped to add another notch to my belt with this one, but alas it didn’t work out. But I have others. I’ll try again soon.
July 19th, 2018 at 6:35 pm
This is a good review of an excellent book. I’d also like to thank David Vineyard for his captivating appraisal of Innes, an inventive and delightful author who doesn’t get nearly as much critical esteem as he deserves these days.
July 19th, 2018 at 8:40 pm
Innes was true to the rules save when he ignored them entirely, alternating humorous fantasy with straight detective fiction, both which he excelled at. LAMENT FOR A MAKER is likely the best of the fantastical Appleby’s while THE MAN FROM THE SEA the best thriller, and ONE MAN SHOW his undoubted masterpiece on all counts. APPLEBY’s ANSWER and THE GAY PHOENIX are two among the better late books, both from the 1970s.