Very entertaining kept me turning the beautifully written pages.An author to follow recommend #netgalley#ipsobooks

I simply Kant take any more... 1 star
When Dr Umpleby, the President of prestigious and ancient St Anthony's College, is found murdered, Inspector Appleby of the Yard is rushed to the spot, as the local plods will clearly not be well educated or cultured enough to deal with such a sensitive affair. Fortunately Appleby can quote major and minor philosophers with the best of them and has more than a passing knowledge of all the arcane subjects covered in a classical Oxbridge education, all of which will no doubt help him to uncover who killed the President and why.

The tone of my introduction may have been somewhat of a spoiler for my opinion of the book, so I may as well jump straight to the conclusion – I abandoned this at just under 40%, finally throwing in the towel when one of the characters hinted that the clue to the mystery might be found in an anecdote about Kant quoted in a book by De Quincey. This, only a couple of pages after the following passage...

And he [Inspector Appleby] sipped his whisky and finally murmured to Titlow [a suspect], with something of the whimsicality that Titlow had been adopting a little before, “What truth is it that these mountains bound, and is a lie in the world beyond?”
There was silence while Titlow's eye dwelt meditatively on the policeman conversant with Montaigne. Then he smiled, and his smile had great charm. “I wear my heart on my wall?” he asked. “To project one's own conflicts, to hang them up in simple pictorial terms – it is to be able to step back and contemplate oneself. You understand?”

I couldn't help but feel it might have been more useful had Appleby asked whether Titlow had crept into the college garden in the middle of the night and shot the President, or searched his rooms for the gun, but each to his own, I suppose. And certainly, my method wouldn't have allowed Innes to show his vast erudition and superior intellect, which appears to be the main purpose of the book.

The actual plot is based on there being a limited number of people, almost all academics, who could have had access to Dr Umpleby's rooms at the time of the murder. Sadly, this aspect becomes tedious very quickly with much talk of who had or didn't have keys, where rooms are in relation to each other, where walls and passages are. I felt a desperate need for a nap... oops, I mean a map... after the first several dozen pages of description. Oddly enough, Innes claims Appleby is happier dealing with problems on a “human or psychological plane” and then proceeds to have this great intellectual wandering around in the (literal) dark, playing hunt the missing key. By 40%, only one possible motive had emerged, largely because Appleby seems more interested in listing the academic tomes on the suspects' bookshelves than in trying to find out where they had been at the time of the crime.

This is one of Martin Edwards' picks in his The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, and I've seen several positive reviews of other books of Michael Innes' recently, so I'm willing to accept that my antipathy to this style of writing isn't universal, or perhaps Innes improved in later books – this, I believe, was his first. However, the only emotions it provoked in me were tedium and irritation at the perpetual intellectual snobbery. Having been made to realise my own status as dullard, I shall take my inferior intellect and defective education off into the dunce's corner now... but don't feel too sorry for me, for I shall take with me an ample supply of chocolate and some books by authors who may not have achieved a First in Classics at Oxbridge but who nevertheless know the definition of the word “entertain”...

In truth, I think my rating of this one is harsh – had I been able to convince myself to struggle through it, it may have earned three stars for the quality of the writing and plot. But since I couldn't bring myself to finish it, I fear I can only give it one.

PS Appleby and Umpleby? Seriously??

NB This book was provided for review by the publisher, Ipso Books.

As much as I love a good thriller/mystery, this book unfortunately didn't grab me. I started and stopped several times but just didn't find the characters/plot to my taste.

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.

I found this read very slow going. The murder was one of those all doors closed and barred. On top of it all very few people had keys. Then again the murdered President of the College changed the keys one day before he was killed but again limited few given keys. How did the murderer execute this very dramatic murder? Everyone of his colleagues seem to have a watertight alibi and those who do not, do not have any grudge or reason to get rid of the President. He was a crusty curmudgeon but they all were.

Academia described in detail, Inspector Appleby trying to solve a seemingly unsolvable murder

Goodreads and Amazon review up on 9/8/2017. Also posted on my FB on 9/8/2017

I love the Appleby books and this is the first one. As all the others it's witty, intelligent and maybe a bit confusing, but a real fun read! The setting especially is very well done.

'A most embarrassing wealth of clues'

This is a lightly-fun old skool mystery with a complicated plot involving lots of suspects who drag bodies around a college garden, contrive ingenious mechanisms, and generally lie to thwart suspicions - luckily Inspector Appleby is a suitably erudite gentleman and well able to get to the bottom of who killed the college president. Good if you like unravelling intellectual clues rather than racing around with lots of pace and action.

Posted on Amazon.

Having read this many years ago, I was thrilled to see this again available, and I must say I did enjoy it again. Although I must be getting a little older as I found myself a little lost in all the timings, nevertheless it was a very clever written book with very likeable characters. It is a typical British University mystery, light and involved - it was lovely revisiting the book.

When I first read this, fifty years ago, I thought this novel was brilliant. On this reading, my third, I think, I was not so impressed.

It is just TOO clever for its own good, too playful, too concerned to toy around with the genre-not a closed room mystery but essentially a very restricted access college problem.

Appleby, the dons, and the undergrads, talk too much and do too much. Everyone suspects someone and either wants to peg the crime firmly on them or make sure they are not suspected. What is essentially a simple crime of murder, becomes rather boringly convoluted.

One of the dons, Gott, writes detective novels and this adds another ingredient to the mixture, making things especially complex, since Gott is involved in devising yet another crime!

The writing is as excellent as you would expect from an academic writing in the 1930's, with lots of literary allusions. Some modern readers without the benefits(?) of a certain type of British education may find it hard-going.

Excellent! Enthralling and entertaining.