Michael Innes: Carson's Conspiracy and The Gay Phoenix

Okay, neither of these are very good. They both followed the stolen-identity-sinister butler/manservant formula I saw in The New Sonia Wayward. What's up with that? Why the repetition of the same theme... I was bored. Too bad.

Well, Carson's Conspiracy was not really stolen identity, but about a man who has the brilliant idea of faking his death to escape pecuniary problems. But sort of stolen identity, since he has an employee travelling under his son's name to do it. Enough of that. The Gay Phoenix is about two brothers on a boat, one dies and the other assumes his identity for the money.

That's all you need to know about them. No need to read them, really.

Michael Innes: Appleby at Allington and The New Sonia Wayward

I was very surprised at our local library branch to come across these two books, I thought I'd read everything the library had to offer during my last Innes phase. But not so. Goodie.

(After writing those sentences there was an eight-hour pause, during which Minimus and I watched trains on YouTube and splashed in puddles (PLASS IN DE PUDDEL!) and made dinner etc. FYI.)

Appleby at Allington is a bit of a classic whodunnit, featuring the retired Inspector Appleby solving crimes in his neighbourhood. He is invited to Allington Hall to dine with the owner, a former scientist. Towards the end of the evening they go out to admire the son et lumière show that has been set up in the ruins of the original hall, and come across a dead body. Then there is a village fête, and another dead body is found, fished out of the lake. I liked this one, it was funny and well-planned. I enjoy this kind of dry humorous old-school British bantering. The New Sonia Wayward is a stand-alone, more psychological thriller, about a man who finds his successful writer wife dead, and tries to pass her off as being alive but out of the country so he won't lose her money. The tangled web of lies grows ever more dense and complicated for him, and his staff start to blackmail him. It's not at all bad, but unfortunately we see where it's going the minute he spots his wife's doppelgänger on the train.

I'd love to have a Michael Innes collection though, perfect feeling-a-bit-down reading.

Michael Innes: A Connoisseur's Case

A rather early one.

Appleby and his wife Judith visit an old uncle, and stumble across the murder of an old man who recently returned to the neighbourhood from Canada. I can't be arsed to go into detail here, the memory of it has almost faded by now, I read it weeks ago... anyway, there is a mansion and a canal tunnel and a pub owner... I dunno, it was enjoyable, but fleetingly so.

Aaaaand we're sinking again

I've got a pile of books from the library to plow through next week at work, so I'd better blog about the last ones from last week before I start. Last week before Christmas, thanks be to Jesus, I don't know if I can take much more... I don't know why all manner of shite has to happen before Christmas, I really don't.

I've read two Michael Innes - not the two best ones I feel. I suspect the earlier work is the best, so I went rooting in the library cellar for older novels, and found a few. Give them a try and then see. I'm down to re-reading all the crime fic I like otherwise I think. The Art of Detection, Laurie R. King's latest is constantly out or reserved. Hey, I'll tell my eldest I want it for Christmas! She did ask.... but she can only afford a paperback, so I may see if that's out yet. Surely not already? I'll just have to wait...

Back to Innes. Death at the Chase features Innes major hero Lord Appleby, nowadays retired from Scotland Yard. Out walking he comes across a local character, convinced he's being persecuted and that his life is threatened over something that happened in France during the war. Appleby witnesses an attempt upon his life, and gets suckered in. Coincidentally his son Bobby also has business with the old man via a new friend. Not the best of books at all. An Awkward Lie also has Bobby cast as the lead, this time he finds a body in a bunker while playing a mornig round of golf. When the body is gone by the time the police get there he wants to clear his name in case he's perceived as a liar. Also forgettable. Although I'd rather read these than say Lisa Marklund. But hey...

Currently I've almost finished 'Tis, the sequel to Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. It's not as good as Angela's Ashes, but it's still a good read, a story that wanted to be told. Angela's Ashes flows better though, and is more well-defined since it ends so well when he goes off back to New York. 'Tis is more vague in its temporal boundaries, and kind of just keeps going. I'd still recommend it though, for people who want to understand the Irish psyche - that psyche I'm touched by myself and desperate to understand...

Good hopes for next weeks reading - found some Ngaio Marsh and Josephine Tey in the cellar apart from the Michael Innes, so that's promising. Those two ladies have all the men whipped.

I is working really hard

Edmund Crispin: The Glimpses of the Moon

I've read all the Crispin novels the library has to offer, and I need to remember that. I keep borrowing them thinking that I haven't, but I have. I have I have I have. And this one is the one with the pig's head - to help me remember. Not that they're not pleasant, it's just such a downer to think you have a virgin book and instead be left with... hang on, that was a bad metaphore getting worse. Forget it.

TGOTM has a cover proclaiming it to be "his first novel for over twenty years" and "well worth waiting for". It was published in -77, and must have been eagerly anticipated by his fans. Crispin has a very special (I was going to put "very unique", which would have been ironic as that is precisely the type of phrase that a Crispin book would take the piss out of, as something is either unique or not, right? so I changed my mind) style, very funny and literary, as the reviewers sometimes put it. For example:

[...]"Gobbo!" the Major rapped out in an army voice. "Answer the question, please!"

Luckily Gobbo had never been in the forces, so this worked. "Ur," he said. The current had reversed course, and he was coming back inshore again. "Ur. Ur, ur." All at once a spasm of energy seized him. "Er never," he began recapitulating, doppio movimento, accelerando. "Er never killed en. And I'll tell 'ee fer why. Cuz," he coda-ed triumphantly, allegro assai, "I wer talkin' to en."

I think this is hilarious. This is in the very beginning, and I giggled so hard I decided that the book had to be re-read. It's a good start, and we're thrown right in to the story, in which Gervase Fen, our professor and hero, has borrowed a cottage in a small village to get underway with his book on 20th century novelists. The murders interfere. They are actually incredibly gruesome, with decapitated and mutilated bodies, but they are covered with a sheet of Wodehouse-esque humour (I'm not claiming the humour is Wodehouse-esque. The Swedish library review on the inside cover is. I've never read Wodehouse, always been something unappealing about it to my mind. And now I want to even less, because I suspect the more Wodehouse in this Crispin, the less fun for me. It deteriorates into separate humouristic episodes that barely hang together. It's like reading one of those authors who is obviously desperate for his/her book to be filmed, and has the entire dialogue written in funny one-liners).

Let's see, what other notes did I make... From this book I learnt the names of the cow's four stomachs in English! Rumen, honeycomb, manyplies and abomasum. How odd are they??? I had some other potential quotes, but cannot be arsed. Must move on.

Michael Innes: The Ampersand Papers and Appleby's Answer

I randomly chose two Innes books too. They have in common some incredibly ignorant and hilariously funny (therefore) nobility, FYI. The Ampersand Papers is about possibly valuable literary manuscripts being stored in a delapidated castle tower for a lark, and Appleby's Answer is about a lady writer of detective fiction who provides a madman with a plot for murder - or not. I like Innes style, they are funny, literary (again, ha ha), and make you feel a bit smart, even though they aren't really a difficult read. The latter book also, possibly, contains a veiled P.D. James, as he writes about a woman who is considered the queen of detective fiction and used to work at the Foreign Office. A-ha, as Piglet tried to say.

Carter Dickson: The Ten Teacups

Carter Dickson is the same fella as John Dickson Carr, the master of the locked-room mystery. This is one such mystery, and a good one, if one knows about cricket pitching. He helpfully provides you with notes on where the clues to the solution where during the dénouement, which I find endearing.

Jeffrey Deaver: The Cold Moon

I was sort of watching the film version of The Bone Collector on the telly while I was reading this, and I was struck by how simple the film was compared to a Deaver novel, which will contain subplots in scores and red herrings in large quantities. In this one a serial killer appears called the Watchmaker - but of course all is not that simple, and I really don't want to say too much, as the transition from classic serial killer novel to a different kind of thriller is quite surprising and should be read if you enjoy this sort of thing.

But I will say this: it was OBVIOUS all along that Sachs wasn't going to quit cophood. God.

Michael Innes: The Daffodil Affair

I've never read any Innes before - not sure why, just never occurred to me. But the other week I met an acquaintance who noticed my Peter Lovesey novel, and we got talking about crime fiction, and he mentioned that he used to read Michael Innes, and I thought I'd give him a shot then.

Reading the novel I fluctuated between thinking it was great and thinking it was pretentious. The first blogging idea that came into my head was that I should write "this is a literary novel - if by literary you mean that there are an awful lot of words in the sentences" - but later I decided that it doesn't really apply. It is literary in the real sense too - oblique-ish references to Ulysses (the Joyce one) etc. On the whole, two days after finishing it, I think it's quite memorable. In a good way. Excellent? Would I say that? I think I must read some more to make sure (but I'm reading Ian Rankin now, so it will have to wait).

The story is that a series of seemingly unconnected events - the disappearance of a counting cabhorse, a haunted house, a multiple personality girl and a Yorkshire witch - turn out to be all part of a scheme to cash in on peoples' credulity in the post-war years (the book is from 1944). The actual crime novel part is very by the way really - it's more a case of the prime characters being police officers than a case of a novel about a crime. There is no detection per se, they sort of stumble upon the right people in a deus ex machina sort of way. Which is disappointing if you're expecting a whodunnit. I suggest the reader just goes with it.

I think some quotes are in order.

"There are openings in all classes [ ... ] In the main it will be spiritualism for the upper class and astrology for the lower. Spiritualism is comparatively expensive - and can be extremely so - whereas astrology is quite cheap. The middle classes will have the benefit of a little of both. For rural populations we shall rely cheifly on witchcraft. What is sometimes called the intelligentsia has exercised my mind a good deal. Yoga might do, and reincarnation and the Great Mind and perhaps a little Irish mythology. But the problem is not important, as there are likely to be singularly few of them left."

It is uncannily accurate, isn't it?

" 'Here is a perfect detective-story motive, and yet we're not in a detective story at all.'

'My dear man, you're talking like something in Pirandello. Go to sleep.'

'We're in a sort of hodge-podge of fantasy and harum-scarum adventure that isn't a proper detective story at all. We might be by Michael Innes.'

'Innes? I've never heard of him.' Appleby spoke with decided exasperation."

Niiiice!

This could make an excellent film, in the right hands.