I’ve been meaning to participate in the Crime Fiction Alphabet hosted by Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise, for weeks now, but somehow I was always just too late. Anyway, here I go now, this week’s letter is N and I’ve read a Michael Innes book which was first published in 1960.
The new Sonia Wayward is an unusual book because there are no really likeable characters in it, which for me anyway is usually a real turn off in a book but this one manages to overcome that huge disadvantage.
It begins with the very sudden death of Colonel Ffolliot Petticate’s wife, Sonia Wayward, whilst they are out sailing in their small yacht. It’s a financial disaster for her husband as Sonia was earning the money as a writer of very popular fiction. The colonel is retired from the army and only has a small pension to live on.
After imbibing a large quantity of whisky to settle his nerves, he decides to dispose of Sonia overboard, with the intention of telling everyone that she is travelling, it’s important to pretend that she’s still alive, so that he can continue to live his very comfortable life. He takes on the task of finishing Sonia’s latest novel and fends off all inquiries as to Sonia’s whereabouts.
At the beginning the Colonel decides to keep the lies and deceit to the minimum, but they multiply like crazy and he finds himself in a very sticky situation when his live-in servants become suspicious as to the fate of their employer.
That’s really just the bare bones of the book as I don’t like to say too much about crime fiction, but this book is absolutely full of twists and turns from the very beginning and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Michael Innes was born in Edinburgh in 1906, was educated at Edinburgh University and Oriel College, Oxford and went on to become a Professor of English at various universities. He had a very long writing career which you can read about here. He also wrote under his real name, J.I.M. Stewart, and those books are also well worth reading.
Welcome to the Crime Fiction Alphabet. This post is very interesting. I read a lot of Michael Innes books way back when (mostly Appleby or Honeybath series) and I had never heard of this one. I had been looking for an inverted mystery for months, with the murderer being known from the beginning, and now I keep running into them all over the place. I enjoy that kind of book.
TracyK,
Thanks. The thing about thi sone is that his wife actually dropped dead from natural causes but because he behaves as if he murdered her by getting rid of her body, he tangles himself up with all sorts of problems.
I think you might enjoy The 12.30 From Croydon by Freeman Wills Crofts. I remember that the murderer is known from early on in the book so it’s an interesting twist.
This one sounds a lot better than the other one I read! Glad your aboard! I have to get my post up!
Peggy Ann,
I kept running out of time, I’ve been trying to do this since the letter F!
Wow, that sounds way more interesting that the usual whodunnit. I’m curious now to see what kind of twists and turns can show up when the murderer is known. Michael Innes is a name I have heard but I don’t think I have read anything by him. Thanks for the review.
Peter Reynard,
Thanks for dropping by. Michael Innes wrote his crime novels from 1936 to 1986 so they vary quite a lot and obviously some are better than others, but there are quite a lot which are really good. I hope you get a chance to read some of them.
I’m going to Barter Books in Alnwick today – I hope I can find a copy of this there, as it does sound good.
Margaret,
Well, I enjoyed it anyway, I hope you have some good luck at Alnwick!
No luck with any books by Michael Innes this time. I’ll check what the library has in stock (maybe in the Reserve Stock!), but I did get some other books, including one by Francis Iles – I’ve been trying to find some of his for a while and my luck was in yesterday, when I found ‘Before the Fact’, the book that Hitchcock based his film ‘Suspicion’.
Margaret,
I think you might be lucky with the reserve stock. My library had a lot of them in their yellow Gollancz binding. I’ll have to look out for Francis Iles too, I have the film so I’d like to read the book.
Katrina – Oh, this sounds like a very interesting story! I know what you mean about characters one simply doesn’t like; a lot of times that puts me right off a book too. But if the plot is good, as this one seems to be, well then it’s worth the read.
Margot,
Definitely! It always amazes me that some authors don’t seem to realise that it’s a good idea to have at least one character whose side you are on, but this one works because of the twists and turns and a sort of ‘come uppance’ eventually. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
I’ve been a huge fan of Innes for decades, reread some of his more than ten times. (That said, many are barely worth reading once, notably those written after 1975.) Sonia Wayward is definitely one of his best, and one of stories of crime rather than mysteries, or the bizarre and fantastic adventure stories he also wrote with detective elements, such as “Appleby on Aarat.) Other crime books were Money From Holme and Change of Heir, an amusing impersonation story. His masterpiece is “Appleby’s End,” where his detective meets his future wife Judith, and her eccentric family of artists and writers, poverty stricken gentry. Other top choices include The Weight of the Evidence, The Daffodil Affair (a ghost story of sorts which contains a unique motive for murder) and There Came Both Mist and Snow (published in the U.S.A. as A Comedy of Terrors, which has been accurately described as drawing room comedy with a shooting.
I rather like some of the characters in Sonia Wayward, notably the lower class woman the Colonel hires to.. never mind. His bewildered encounter with an Oxford educated, upper class bohemian couple must have been straight out of Innes’ own experience. A gem….The colonel himself, while a nasty type, I also found possible to sympathise with, as his chicanery got him deeper and deeper in trouble….
Liz Babcock,
Wow, you certainly know your stuff! I agree that his books can be a hit and miss, I suppose he was getting on by the time we got to 1975. I read quite a few of his books years ago and I’m re-reading some now. Lament for a Maker seems to be the one which a lot of people mention but I don’t have it yet. Have you read it? I agree, he obviously used a lot of his real life in the books, write what you know about as they say I suppose. It must have been a bit worrying for his colleagues though.
I also read his J.I.M Stewart books in the 1970s and enjoyed them, I still have quite a few of those books and I plan to read them again, when I get the time. Thanks for taking the time to make such an informative and interesting comment.
Katrina