A Night of Errors

A Night of Errors - Michael Innes

Calling to mind Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, this mystery presents a convoluted puzzle. It seems as if Innes the writer is wondering what will happen if he blends the conventions of the 20^th century police procedural with the mix-ups and confusion of the Bard’s early play.

The result? A parody of the complicated mysteries of Hammett and Chandler, both popular when this mystery was written in the late 1940s. Not to mention that Innes names an old lady character who lives in a village Mrs. Marple.

… Mrs. Marple dried her soapy arms on her apron, scattered the curs with two well-directed kicks, delivered a number of threatening remarks in the direction of the now silent cottage and led the way into what she evidently regarded as the scene of an important crime. Three nights before, the sleeping quarters of the Khakis had been broken into and two of the birds removed. “Felony!” said Mrs. Marple with a dramatic gobble. “Felony stalking my own ‘earth and ‘ome. ‘Itlermism in the midst.”

This 1947 novel features the series hero John Appleby, now in retirement having married money. His wife Judith is away, so his personal life takes a distant second to his detective skills in this one. As usual for the Appleby books, the action is compressed, taking place over only two days. The human drama is tragic and over the top, but it works out to a reasonable reveal with plausible motivations, blood and thunder and flame and exhaustion and muddle aside.

“Michael Innes” was the pen name of J.I.M. Stewart. An Oxford professor, Stewart wrote mysteries under the pen name to protect his academic reputation and supplement his probably lowish income as a prof. As we would expect from an English professor, the use of language, while playful, will engage bookish people at home with all kinds of writing from the backs of cereal boxes to Elizabethan melodrama.

Under his own name, Stewart wrote academic explications of literary figures and literary fiction. He must have loved writing fiction because he wrote 20 novels between 1954 and 1985, beside the 40 or so mysteries and crime novels. Considering how laborious creative writing must be, it is an incredibly prolific output.