From London Far (1946)
Blurb:
My review:
Among
Innes’s
large and uneven output, this most gleeful and exuberant “thriller”
stands out
as one of his clearest triumphs. It is
the diverting story of an innocent (middle-aged scholar named Meredith)
abroad,
plunged into murder (one of which he commits, the other he instigates)
and
crime (the doings of the International Society for the Diffusion of
Cultural
Objects), against a picturesque backdrop of warehouses, ruined castles
and Highland moors, and a lunatic
nouveau riche connoisseur’s American mansion.
Dialogue is splendid, and the humour makes this Innes’s funniest
book:
not only mild academic jests, but superb farce, largely provided by the
pick of
the gallery of certifiable lunatics: an endearing psychiatrist who is
as mad as
his patients (whom he believes have abducted him by furniture van to be
instructed in sexology), who begins by believing that the furniture
vans that
keep following him are psychosexual hallucinations; to keep himself
sane, he
refuses to believe in any of the adventures that ensue when he is
kidnapped. Now there’s an
idea for modern drama!
To
the Bibliography.
To
the Michael Innes Page.
To the
Grandest Game in the World.
E-mail.