Sat 9 Jul 2022
MICHAEL INNES – The Long Farewell. Sir John Appleby #17. Victor Gollancz, UK, hardcover, 1958. Dodd Mead, US, hardcover, 1958. Paperback reprints include: Berkley F821, 1963; Perennial, 1982, 1991.
Speaking of titles, you might be thinking that The Long Farewell might be a good one for a hardboiled PI novel, and I certainly couldn’t blame you if you are. But the protagonist for this particular book is far from being a private eye. Sir John Appleby is, in fact, the head of Scotland Yard. And the title comes from Shakespeare — King Henry the VIII (Act III, Scene 2), to be precise.
It’s also the message left by the dead man, a literary scholar, a gadfly, and a bit of a showman to boot. A perfect message to be left by someone believed to have committed suicide. Was this last act a means of avoiding embarrassment when his latest “discovery†was about to be exposed as a forgery? Or did it have something to do with the fact that his hitherto unknown wives were in the house at the same time, and neither very happy about the other?
Author Michael Innes, perhaps the most literary and erudite of detective fiction authors of any time period, is at best in this one. It’s clues and deduction all the way, but all the while poking gentle fun at scholars, bibliographers and collectors in one fell swoop. The number of possible killers is limited to a select few, which makes the job of the armchair detective easier, or so it should be, but by carefully keeping anyone from asking one key question, Innes skillfully delivers a tour de force solution, all tied up into one neat package.
This is the best pure detective story I’ve read in a while.
July 9th, 2022 at 11:09 pm
I know some who despair when Innes goes too far afield into Ealing Comedy country or his rather fanciful version of the John Buchan shocker, but he was a master of the Golden Age Detective story as done here, and frankly I find him fun to read in the other voices too.
I’m not sure which actor I would have seen as Appleby, but John Hurt did a superb job in an audio adaptation of one of the books.
July 9th, 2022 at 11:55 pm
I bottomed out on Innes for a long time after reading THE DAFFODIL AFFAIR. Crashed and burned I did. Here’s my review of it:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1133#comments
John Hurt? Well, maybe, but I’d have to think about it some more.
July 10th, 2022 at 6:33 am
Innes/Stewart is very uneven, under both names, but at his best he is very good indeed in a variety of genres – infuriatingly so, because he could have been even better.
Ernest Hemingway said “I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one.”, but I think Innes/Stewart never bothered to get into the ring or even do any serious training, even though he could have been a strong contender.
July 11th, 2022 at 7:45 am
I agree with David and Roger on Michael Innes’s work: occasionally brilliant, but uneven.
As for Roger’s quote, Hemingway forgot about his fight with Time. Hemingway’s novels recede in popularity. He’s best known now for his short stories especially the IN OUR TIME volume.