Death by Water aka Appleby at Allington by Michael Innes
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
This 1968 whodunnit is as light as a feather. It 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.
Sir John has an odd dinner with a new neighbor who presses him to examine the elaborate electrical system that ran a recent outdoor lightshow on the grounds of the estate. This is 1968, recall, when psychedelic lightshows were all the rage for both the cheery squares and tripping hippies. Besides, who doesn’t like pretty lights?
Anyway, in the operations center they discover a corpse. This, however, does not stop the operations center turned crime scene from 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 startling incidents. The families are genially satirized as athletic parents who are philistines worried that their bookworm children will develop imaginations and independent ways of thought. Innes is a writer for unapologetically bookish people.
Readers that like Patricia Highsmith, Nicholas Blake, Cyril Hare, 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 – hardcore readers – will like this lesser, late-career work regardless.
