The Ampersand
Papers - Michael Innes
In this 1978 mystery, series hero Sir John Appleby,
retired from Scotland Yard, comes in only after the author has introduced us to
Lord Ampersand and his peculiar and confrontational family. Sir John is taking a
stroll along a Cornish beach near the Ampersand castle when a body plummets
down from the North Tower and almost lands on his head. A speleologist suitably
named Cave also happens to be on the spot.
The presumably unhappy corpse turns out to be that of Dr.
Sutch, an academic who has been hired by the Ampersand family to go over the
family papers. The family has found out there is good money to be fetched in
papers and letters about and from luminaries Shelley, Byron, and Coleridge. Dr.
Sutch is also getting to the bottom of a family legend that posits the existence
of a treasure from a Spanish argosy in the
time of the first Elizabeth.
As in the other late novels in this series there are
plenty of incidents. If you thought the portrayal of aristocrats in Trollope is
mean to the land-owning classes, you haven’t seen Innes. Lord Ampersand loves
routine to a fault and knows absolutely nothing about his own ancestors. The
conversation between Sir John and Lady Ampersand about her husband’s feuding
family, while the Lady works on her jigsaw puzzle, is the high point of the
novel; this is a good thing to say, believe me, because the dialogue is so
witty and insightful.
The kind of reader that would like these mysteries is the
kind that likes Josephine Tey and Nicholas Blake or who likes genre fiction
between serious books.
Other Reviews of Michael Innes’ Mysteries
Lament for a Maker (1938)
Appleby on Ararat
(1941)
One Man Show (1952)
Silence Observed (1961)
A Connoisseur’s
Case (1962)
Money from Holme (1964)
A Change of Heir (1966)
Death at the Chase (1970)
Appleby’s Answer (1973)
The
Mysterious Commission (1974)
The Ampersand
Papers (1978)
Lord Mullion’s Secret (1981)
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