Appleby At Allington

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Summary: Alternate title: "Death by Water"
Review: Retired Metropolitan Police Commissioner (New Scotland Yard), Sir John Appleby has a difficult and delicate task when he investigates various deaths that have taken place on the estate of his new neighbor, Owain Allington. For one thing, he is no longer officially a policeman. Colonel Tommy Pride is the local Chief Constable, and Appleby isn't sure whether he likes him. When he comes face-to-face with Colonel Pride at a church fête on Allington's estate, they bristle at each other distrustfully.

Then Appleby realizes that Colonel Pride is practically his double. They are both elderly men with a military bearing. Both are wearing tweeds and almost identical green trilbys. In fact: "If he and Pride...were to hunch themselves down on each side of a fireplace, the effect would be... that of ...twinned china dogs..."

In later novels, Sir John and Colonel Pride become good friends (see "Sheiks and Adders" (1982)), but in "Appleby at Allington" (1968) they are still wary of each other. Nevertheless, Pride supplies the police power necessary to tow a car and corpse out of their host's ornamental pond, and supplies Appleby with the information he needs to solve a series of mysterious deaths.

One might refer to Colonel Pride as Appleby's Lestrade, even to a bit of bumbling on the Chief Constable's part.

Michael Innes combines many themes that he has used in other Appleby mysteries: buried treasure; mysterious scientists; eccentric rectors; feuding relatives; and just a touch of spy story. Intellectual arrogance, as in many of Innes's novels is the villain's Achilles' heel.

Never, I warn you, never invite Sir John to dinner, to a church fête, or to your sound-and-light show on the castle parapet if murder is to follow.

Michael Innes (John Innes Mackintosh Stewart) was born in Edinburgh, educated at Oxford, and taught English in universities all over the world. His scholarly career includes works on Rudyard Kipling and Joseph Conrad, but he is better known as the creator of Inspector John Appleby, whose exploits inspired a lasting vogue for literary (and literate) mysteries. If you'd like to experience Sir John at his donnish zenith, read "Hamlet, Revenge!" (1937).