Death by
Water aka Appleby at Allington
– Michael Innes
This light 1968 whodunnit finds series hero Sir John Appleby in retirement from
Scotland Yard. He and his sculptor wife Judith trade witty observations, as if Nick
and Nora Charles had aged into not drinking anything stronger than sherry.
In this novel, Sir John has an odd
dinner with a new neighbor who unaccountably presses him to examine the
elaborate electrical system that ran a recent outdoor lightshow on the grounds
of the estate. This is 1968, recall, whenpsychedelic lightshows were all the rage for both the cheerful squares and tripping
hippies. Besides, who doesn’t like pretty lights? Not liking pretty lights is like
not liking to watch it raining or snowing.
Anyway, in the operations center
they discover a corpse. This, however, does not stop the operations center
being dismantled for a charity fete to be held on the same grounds the next
day. Nothing stops the traditional village festival on
the estate, after all, lest the meaning of “this green and sceptered isle” be
lost forever. The action focuses on the-pain-in-the-neck family of the owner
and unfolding of incidents. The families are well-drawn as athletic parents who
are philistines worried that their bookworm children will develop imaginations.
Innes is a writer for irredeemably bookish people, with sympathy for us A and B
students fighting to do right in a world
run by conceited dummies and their chumps.
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, late-career work regardless.
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