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Innes, Michael

Page history last edited by Jon 14 years ago

Michael Innes was the pseudonym of an Oxford academic, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (1906–1994), who wrote about forty crime novels between 1936 and 1986. Stewart was born in Edinburgh and educated at Oriel College Oxford. He married Margaret Hardwick in 1932 and had an academic career taking in the Universities of Leeds (1930-5), Adelaide (1935-45), Belfast (1946-8) and Oxford (1949-73), with visits to US universities included. Many of his novels, including his first, have an Oxford setting. Stewart also wrote many novels and literary studies under his own name. He was known as an eccentric lecturer and served as a wartime fire warden during his stint at the University of Adelaide.

Innes's detective novels are rich in allusions to English literature and to Renaissance art. Both the plots of these novels and the motivations of characters within them are influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis. The best-known of Innes' detective creations is Sir John Appleby (originally Inspector John Appleby) of Scotland Yard. Another series character is the painter Charles Honeybath. Sadly, Innes's later stories were often short on detective interest and more like light-hearted thrillers in the style of John Buchan.

Trivia: Stewart's book Character and Motive in Shakespeare is quoted in Chapter 12 of The Bachelors of Broken Hill by Arthur Upfield: The evil which may rise up in a man's imagination may sweep him on to crime, particularly if, like Macbeth, he is imaginative without the release of being creative.

Wyatt James on Michael Innes

Innes was a later "Golden-Age" Detective Story writer, and probably the quirkiest and most erudite. Under his real name of J.I.M. Stewart, he was a Professor of English Literature, at Oxford among other places. His principal detective was John Appleby (later Sir John) of Scotland Yard, a well-educated man of humble origins who ended up as Commissioner. Appleby was a 'new cop' -- that is, a person of intelligence, tact, and intellectual interests. Some would say too much as he can be very obscure and obfuscatory. The characters in these books spout off erudite quotations and allusions to poems that even English majors in America would know only in that they might have heard of the author (of course, kids do that sort of thing now with rock music songs and phrases); no doubt this is due to the obsolescent British form of education that emphasizes memorization. That is what makes these mysteries so entertaining, but only if you can stand that sort of thing. The plots tend to be convoluted, low-keyed but fantastic at the same time; a characteristic device for covering up the solution is to have the suspects speak so allusively as not to make much sense -- they are always hiding some guilty knowledge even if they are not the true villains. However, the situations are often so imaginative and both witty and funny that the stories become addictive.

A comment on John Appleby's career. Like Sherlock Holmes and unlike Hercule Poirot, the detective not only ages but has a developing private life that is alluded to throughout -- but not always consistently. The biggest mystery about Appleby is how, having taken early retirement as an Inspector, he is not only a knight but an Assistant Commissioner not more than five years later. His family and background is sporadically mentioned (an aunt, his humble rural upbringing, a 'radical' youth stage, his time on the beat as a constable, his education -- whether at Oxford or St Anthony's is confusing). Appleby apparently has a love affair with a married woman in Ararat. His wife, his sister, his son all play prominent roles in one book or another. There are also many recurring characters (and back-references to prior adventures), such as the Duke of Horton and Scamnum Court, although Appleby has no single Watson or Lewis. His personality and appearance must mostly be generated in the reader's mind, since he is often a reflective surface via which the mystery is conveyed.

"Mr. Innes is the most adeptly and allusively elephantine wit presently committed to the English language." -- New York Herald Tribune

"The initial crime is like to be a matter of simple passion such as we can all without difficulty understand; the further crimes elaborated from it tend to the extravagance and fantasy -- as also the ingenuity -- of dreams. From all this there emerges a good working rule. Find the simplicities of the case -- those elements in it which make simple sense in terms of the elementary human passions. Take this as a centre and dispose everything else as best you can round about it. Don't be seduced into taking as a centre any of the secondary elaboration, however obtrusive and startling it may appear." -- Sir John Appleby, A Night of Errors

Nick Hay has posted a review of Stewart's autobiography, Myself and Michael Innes, here.