Appleby's End

On what seems to be an interminable railway journey to the village of Snarl in the depths of winter, John Appleby misses his connection because the timetable was printed long before Gregory Grope's grandmother fell down the well. He is invited to stay by a fellow passenger, Everard Raven, an encylopaedist and lexicographer only to find that the Raven family may be linked to the case he has been sent to investigate. Are the novels and stories of Everard's late father, the Victorian writer Ranulph Raven, starting to come true?

I was an avid Michael Innes fan in my teens and twenties and this was always my favourite because of its complete dottiness. It has stood up well to the lapse of time.

One of my very favourite crime novels ever, this one. I think it is because it has such a very peculiar, unique flavour. Innes' prose can sometimes be a bit too florid for some people and similarly his spectacular wealth of knowledge of English literature can put the back up some people, but to me it adds to the strange and almost magic realist atmosphere of this novel. The crime itself is a wonderful idea and some of the images and moments in this book still haunt me to this day. Very unusual but frankly entirely brilliant as well. There's a wonderful annotated guide to the novel online as well.

More screwball comedy than mystery. Like My Man Godfrey, there's a crazy rich family (the Ravens), a love interest (Judith Raven) with whom there's an early extended sequence of banter, much of taking place in a haystack, some loss of wet clothing (but all very PG), etc. The novel opens with a fairly dense, offputting overwritten hard to follow opening scene on a train, before settling down to a more normal level (for Innes) of occasional literary allusion. Though there is a death and much mystery, this is not a murder mystery. As puzzles go, it's not bad, but the resolution seemed awfully cavalier about treating the family's actions as harmless pranks when they appear to have driven an elderly milkmaid mad.

Recommended for fans of show more Innes, Wodehouse, and literary farcical comedies. show less

If you can put up with the writing style, which is erudite to the point of pretention, and have a taste for the bizarre, then Innes will be your cup of tea.

While I am generally not sure I do like the writing style, I do appreciate the references and the plots always intrigue me. This one doesn't disappoint and there is a twist in the last sentence!

One of Innes' best. The opening paragraphs are hugely entertaining and the entire first chapter is hilarious. Whimsical and not at all grim; another of Innes' celebrations of literary England.

Seems like more than a bit of Cold Comfort Farm snuck into this very odd Appleby tale. Quite a strange installment in the series.

possibly wittiest of the Appleby series