Death at the Chase (Crime Monthly Ser.)

Innes, Michael

ISBN 10: 0140032436 / ISBN 13: 9780140032437

Editore: Penguin, Harmondsworth, England, 1986

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Spine/covers slightly creased. Minor shelf wear. "Sir John Appleby, retired Chief Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, thinks Martyn Ashmore, the lord of a neighboring manor, is suffering from senile delusions. Ashmore has accused Sir John of wanting to kill him. However, afrter a large stone block falls from a roof and the two men narrowly escape death, Sir John decides to look further. He discovers that Ashmore lives with a terrible guilt -- his cracking under Nazi torture led to the massacre of many Resistance fighters -- and with a terrible threat -- each year on the anniversary of the massacre an attempt has been made on his life. When a murder does take place, Sir John is joined by his engaging undergraduate son Bobby in the investigation, which is set forth by Michael Innes with all his customary surprises and high spirits."; 12mo - over 6¾" - 7¾" tall.

Codice articolo 000898

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Death at the Chase (Crime Monthly Ser.)
• Editore: Penguin, Harmondsworth, England
• Data di pubblicazione: 1986
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0140032436
• ISBN 13: 9780140032437
• Rilegatura: Mass Market Paperback
• Condizione: Very Good+
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • Mystery

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

When master sleuth, Appleby, leaps over a stile during a country stroll, he is apprehended by an irate Martyn Ashmore, owner of the land on which Appleby has unwittingly trespassed. But when the misunderstanding is cleared up, eccentric, aged Ashmore reveals that he is in fear for his life - once every year, someone attempts to murder him. Is it the French Resistance, or a younger Ashmore on the make? When Martyn dies, Appleby sets out to find who exactly is responsible.

L'autore

Born in Edinburgh in 1906, the son of the city's Director of Education, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart wrote a highly successful series of mystery stories under the pseudonym Michael Innes. Innes was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, where he was presented with the Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize and named a Bishop Frazer's scholar. After graduation he went to Vienna, to study Freudian psychoanalysis for a year and following his first book, an edition of Florio's translation of Montaigne, was offered a lectureship at the University of Leeds. In 1932 he married Margaret Hardwick, a doctor, and they subsequently had five children including Angus, also a novelist. The year 1936 saw Innes as Professor of English at the University of Adelaide, during which tenure he wrote his first mystery story, 'Death at the President's Lodging'. With his second, 'Hamlet Revenge', Innes firmly established his reputation as a highly entertaining and cultivated writer. After the end of World War II, Innes returned to the UK and spent two years at Queen's University, Belfast where in 1949 he wrote the 'Journeying Boy', a novel notable for the richly comedic use of an Irish setting. He then settled down as a Reader in English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, from which he retired in 1973. His most famous character is 'John Appleby', who inspired a penchant for donnish detective fiction that lasts to this day. Innes's other well-known character is 'Honeybath', the painter and rather reluctant detective, who first appeared in 1975 in 'The Mysterious Commission'. The last novel, 'Appleby and the Ospreys', was published in 1986, some eight years before his death in 1994. 'A master - he constructs a plot that twists and turns like an electric eel: it gives you shock upon shock and you cannot let go.' - Times Literary Supplement.