This is quite a good example of Innes in his whimsical mode (no murder, no Appleby) involving youthful acadamics of a very intelligent but naive sort, designing women of their age who can walk all over them, lost art treasures, peculiar American professors, country houses and eccentric squirarchy, and that sort of stuff. The American 'professor' (Milton Milder), who is extremely boring and pontifical, turns out to be a crook. There are three interpolated letters, taking up much of the book, that are marvellous pastiches of the sort of letter a Janeite character might have written to her ex-governess in early Victorian times about the odd behavior of her brothers over a bet -- what would be the better prize to be 'stolen' from the inferior folks of Greece or the Caucasus, all shades of Lord Elgin. These make the book worth reading, even if it's not a detective story.
Wyatt James
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