The Long Farewell (1958)
Blurb:
My review:
Good
Innes is as
rare as the books of Lewis Packford, the Shakespearean scholar who
apparently
shot himself in his library, leaving behind a suicide note consisting
of a
quote from Henry VIII, a household
full of amusingly eccentric guests with names like Prodger, and two
wives. The central situation of bigamy is
handled
with more conviction than is usual with Innes; the red herrings
(bigamy, books
and divers alarums and excursions in the library) juicy; and, instead
of the
usual “laboured facetiousness from which his host seemed to obtain such
harmless pleasure,” the book is very funny in a deep (and Crispin,
even)
manner. Appleby talks rather than
detects his way to the unravelment of the problem, complicated by the
murder of
the alert reader’s chief suspect. What
is not so good is the murderer’s motive and motivation, which are
inconsistent
and unconvincing, no single action following logically from another. Fortunately, the solution is immediately
followed by a good double solution, so that the reader is left with the
impression of a clever piece of work.