Innes, Michael - Appleby on Ararat (1941)

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

A very strange and silly book which yet succeeds in being entertaining, despite (or because of?) that very quality. The plot is as exotic and lush as the setting: Appleby and a small group of Empirers are shipwrecked on a Pacific island inhabited by sinister archaeologists, German spies and transvestites. Although there are the usual Innesian linguistic blocks (e.g., at one point the heroine is described as “being as yet unaware of being obscurely conscious of offence”), the book is remarkably well-written, even if steeped overmuch in Freud.

While returning to England from Australia during the early part of the War, Appleby and five other people end up in the 'sky-light bar' floating upside-down in the Pacific after their ocean liner is torpedoed, and are eventually stranded on a desert island. One of them is murdered, making this, technically, a trapped-in-a-country-house type mystery. Sheer fantasy, with some spy elements thrown in. Comes in four movements and a long coda: Adrift at Sea (Allegro), Stranded a là Swiss Family Robinson (Andante), Finding the Resort Hotel over the Unexplored East Ridge (Scherzo) -- now quick segue into a more typically Innes theme, and a lot less entertaining than the first three movements (Andante sustenento), taking place in this weird resort for health nuts and escapees, followed by the violent Rondo to wrap it all up in context of the War (spies, Nazis, etc.). An amusing but silly book. A precursor, in a way, of Peter Dickinson's earlier books. This would have worked better as a non-Appleby, since the Inspector doesn't really fit well here.

Wyatt James