Innes, Michael - The Daffodil Affair (1942)

Review by Nick Fuller

5/5

“We’re in a sort of hodge-podge of fantasy and harum-scarum adventure that isn’t a proper detective story at all. We might be by Michael Innes.”

Utterly bizarre, yet quintessential Innes. As with Gladys Mitchell and GK Chesterton, the plot is solid and complex enough, rendering what would otherwise be very silly, believable. Here the bizarre comes in the form of vanishing telepathic horses, vanishing schizophrenic lower-class girls, vanishing haunted houses (investigated by Dr. Johnson) and vanishing modern-day witches. How, the reader asks, can Innes fit these disparate elements together? The plot then shifts to a dream-like shipboard setting, where Appleby and a (slightly) mad colleague impersonate Australians — very funny. At the same time, the ship is revealed to have as passengers only those with mediumistic powers, all under the secret supervision of the sinister psychic researcher Emery Wine. The plot concludes on Wine’s islands in South America, where the book turns into proto-James Bond: a megalomaniac villain with plots for world domination, working on an island in the middle of South America, kidnapping (scientific) talent and keeping pet alligators. Throughout, the dialogue is brilliant, the writing and plot splendidly surreal, and Innes is in top form.

What do the following have in common? A stolen half-witted carriage horse. A kidnapped girl with multiple-personality disorder. An absconding genuine witch. A purloined haunted house. Another Innesian fantasy, similar to but better than Ararat, with a Jurassic Park/Dr No type of setup in the South American Pampas. Lucy Rideout, the split-personality girl, is particularly well drawn, as is the villain Mr Wine.

Wyatt James

The Daffodil Affair was selected by Barzun and Taylor as one of their Hundred Classics of Crime Fiction, which certainly gives the lie to the notion that they enjoyed only ostensibly stodgy, purist works by Humdrum masters. This novel about the investiagation, by Inspectors Appleby and Hudspith, of the disappearances of a "halfwit girl," a "halfwit horse" (one Daffodil), a descendant of a Yorkshire witch and an eighteenth-century London townhouse that was the site of two hauntings (one investigated by Samuel Johnson), is bizarre, even by Michael Innes' own standards. Yet despite the fantastification, the plot remains clear and cogent and the writing disciplined. I'm reluctant to say much more to those who have not read it, so I'll just add that I find it one of the masterpieces of detective fiction's Golden age, standing beside the best works by such English Baroque masters as Gladys Mitchell and Margery Allingham (there's a whiff of JDC at times too, particularly the 18th and 19th century descriptions of the hauntings). Although there is some detection of a sort, it's probably more accurate to classify this as an Edgar Wallace style thriller, possibly the best such ever written. In addition to the inventive plot, the book also offers an marvelous gallery of colorful characters and vivid writing, and there's even, at the heart of the book, interesting speculation about the fate of reason in a world that brought us the madness of World War Two. Innes' earlier wartime Appleby novel, Appleby at Ararat, also is a very good work, one that presaged the glorious Golden Age brilliance of Daffodil.

Curt Evans