Mount TBR #5

I read this book for Mount TBR Reading Challenge 2019.

A Change of Heir – Michael Innes

This 1966 crime novel kicks off with an out-of-work actor, George Gadberry, getting an audit notice from the British counterpart of the IRS. Understandably wanting to disappear for a time, Gadberry accepts an unusual job. He is hired by wealthy Nicholas Comberford to impersonate Nicholas Comberford. The ostensible reason is for Gadberry to accept the invitation of Comberford’s eccentric aunt for an extended stay at her country house so that the real Comberford can loll about Mediterranean Europe.

Innes often explored the theme of forgery in paintings and impersonation. In Sheiks and Adders series hero John Appleby stumbles into a costume party full of fake-sheiks who camouflage a genuine sheik who is having a secret meeting with the host. In From London Far two scholars go undercover to infiltrate a gang of smugglers of looted art. In this one, Gadberry is no dummy but it takes time for the ethical pratfalls of such a deception become clear to him. The intelligent but immoral character is a mainstay in Innes’ novels. Gadberry also stumbles onto the slippery nature of identity, a philosophical digression that is, in turn, distracted by the realization that the impersonation is an open secret among important figures in the mansion.

Innes likes to set stories in remote places. This time it is a former abbey in the Yorkshire dales. He enjoys describing the medieval architecture and its total impossibility to live in in 1966, even for an aunt stuck in the Augustan period.

Readers that like Patricia Highsmith, Nicholas Blake, Cyril Hare, Mary Fitt and Josephine Tey will like the intelligent, deftly written, and short  mysteries of Michael Innes. New readers of Innes would do better to test the early ones such as Hamlet, Revenge!, Lament for a Maker or Stop Press; fans of Innes – readers like me – will like this lesser work regardless.