Martyn Ashmore believes that on one day each year an attempt is made on his life and one year it will be successful. On the day in question he meets Sir John Appleby, invites him to lunch and as they are about to enter the house a heavy piece of masonry falls between them. Although sceptical at first, Appleby decides to investigate further.

I had a big grin while reading this thoroughly enjoyable excursion into one of Sir John's loopier adventures which every now and then burst into a fit of giggles. ( )

Maybe this really just deserves 3.5* but I thought that the balance between Appleby & his son Bobby was just right in this 25th entry in the series. Plus Martyn Ashmore was enjoyably eccentric (or was he mad as his family thought?). ( )

Maybe this really just deserves 3.5* but I thought that the balance between Appleby & his son Bobby was just right in this 25th entry in the series. Plus Martyn Ashmore was enjoyably eccentric (or was he mad as his family thought?). ( )

After a couple of long-winded passages I was tempted to abandon this book. That's something I don't like doing, so I kept going. The most I got from the book is that Innes is a pretentious writer, the plot was poor, and the characters were either snobs or just silly.

"All appeared to have been very fond of chimneys; clusters of these, some weathered smooth and others still distinguishably carved with Tudor elaboration, sprouted from a grey stone roof which had turned sinuous and undulant with the years. The effect was rather that of some improbable monster in a medieval Bestiary, horripilant like the porpentine against its foes."

"In the silence which for a moment followed this the rising wind continued to murmur and whisper in the interstices of the roof. According to one's mood, one might have concluded the effect to be either maleficent or benign; a sinister stirring of those natural forces by which the pyramids themselves will one day be worn away, or a comfortable cradle song crooned by earth over a structure which, although venerable to a human eye, must nestle in a mere infancy to the eye of time." ( )

Death at the Chase (1970) by Michael Innes

It's a very long time indeed since I've read a Michael Innes novel, and I'd forgotten his extraordinary self-satisfied pomposity of narrative and the fact that it was for good reason that I'd never been able to make any headway with the non-mystery novels this Oxford don wrote under his real name, J.I.M. Stewart. If you want a flavour of the tone and exaggerated plundering of vocabulary, you could do worse than read the sections of Michael Innes parody interpolated by Dave Langford into our spoof disaster novel Earthdoom (1987; shortly to be reissued by those enterprising folks at DarkQuest Books). (Generally speaking Dave did the Innes parodies in that book, I did the McBain ones.)

In Death at the Chase the style does ease up a bit in places, usually when Bobby Appleby, son of series detective John Appleby, is taking centre stage in place of his father; but certainly the first few chapters read in themselves like a parody. This may have been because Innes realized he was having to stretch a short story's worth of plot quite extravagantly in order to fill out a novel, and thus resolved never to use one word when a score or more -- or preferably a few paragraphs -- would do every bit as well. The plot is certainly pretty simple. John Appleby, now Sir John, has retired from the force to enjoy rural splendour. He discovers that one of his neighbours, the eccentric Martyn Ashmore, believes that an attempt is made on his life once a year by vengeant members of the French Resistance, still enwrathed after all these years because he gave up information to the Nazis under torture. In due course Ashmore is indeed bumped off, but the solution to the mystery proves to lie a lot closer to home.

Still, at least this one's better than Appleby's End, memory of which still strikes a chill in my soul even decades after I read it . . .
( )