Lament for a Maker (1938)

Blurb:

My review:

One of the true classics of the detective fantasy, this, one of Innes’s masterpieces, recalls Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series in its denseness, doom-laden atmosphere which achieves its greatest effects by making the horrible amusing and the amusing horrible, and the delight in the possibilities of the English tongue.  The plot is beautifully constructed, every narrative solving the previous narrative’s questions and posing new ones in a manner reminiscent of Carr’s Arabian Nights Murder, yet the final solution comes as a distinct surprise (despite certain resemblances to Trent’s Last Case).  Wonderful.

To the Bibliography.

To the Michael Innes Page.

To the Grandest Game in the World.

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