Innes, Michael - The Appleby File

Another nice collection. Many of the shorter stories are neat little exercises leading up to a punnish closing line, others reiterate constant Innes themes (impersonation, suicide-disguised-as-crime, financiers and dotty squires, art fraud). At least one, however, is a classic Innes and should be anthologized -- "The Ascham" -- it epitomizes this author in a few pages, has most elements of everything Innes wrote, in a truncated way -- A-plus.

Wyatt James