#michael innes

[lascitasdelashoras]

Michael Innes - Hare sitting up

[aranazo]

Hamlet, Revenge! by Michael Innes with a cover by Alan Aldridge.

[macrolit]

Merdith would murmur certain Greek verses to the effect that hard beside each other run the paths of night and day - meaning thereby that a man's life is full of close shaves of which he is wholly unaware. The blade passes within a millimetre, but because it is invisible, not a blink results.

Michael Innes, Far from London (1 of 12 vintage paperback classics that comprise our current giveaw@y)

[movie-titlecards]

Candleshoe (1977)

My rating: 5/10

So I guess somebody saw Anastasia (the Yul Brynner one, obviously, the cartoon was not even a twinkle in Don Bluth's eye when this was made) and decided the plot needed significantly more shenanigans and hijinks and also pirate treasure. It's fine I guess?

[thisbluespirit]

@lurking-latinist #…*goes off to look up dizzyingly meta Golden Age mysteries*#they sound marvelous#as does this AU! 

I was going to reply to this, but if I start talking books, I may as well just do it in a post, because it’s never going to fit in a tumblr reply.

I haven’t read enough of these particular authors to know if I’ve read their weirdest or have yet to plumb the depths of them.  So who knows what else could be lurking out there?  Or the rest of their back catalogue could be almost normal.

But it is quite fun, because while Christie, Sayers, Allingham, & Marsh were off writing the serious crime novels & leading the field, there’s also this little band of male authors who sometimes write regular crime novels and sometimes go full on comedy or meta or completely random.

The two biggest examples of this (that I’ve read) is Edmund Crispin’s The Moving Toyshop (which tbh, i found a bit much - I prefer Love Lies Bleeding in which Love’s Labours Won turns up at a school and people inevitable get murdered in the rush to get ahold of it.  but that is practically normal).  It’s very random indeed.  The most meta I’ve yet found, as I said, is Michael Innes The Daffodil Affair, a book which I keep because otherwise I wouldn’t be sure I hadn’t just started misremembering things, but basically a horse and a house get stolen and by the end the characters are complaining about being stuck in a Michael Innes book.  (But he also writes some straightforward classics like The Death at the President’s Lodgings so you just never know what you will get.  Could be whimsical meta, could be classic crime.)

John Dickson Carr is fast becoming my fave of this group, though, but he’s been hard to get hold of since I discovered him (but seems to be being reprinted at last!).  He’s more humorous than meta, but certainly plenty of random.  I’m reliably informed that at least one (or two?) feature time travel.  (I can’t remember which one, but it must be one of the three I was strongly recced by my flist when it came up, those being The Burning Court, Fire, Burn! & The Devil in Velvet.)

I have very much enjoyed his And So To Murder and The Case of the Constant Suicides, which both had great tropey premises in them (UC generator eat your heart out.  I give you “omg there was only one first class sleeping compartment in the overnight train to Scotland & it turns out we’ve been conducting a war in the letters section of the newspaper” and “two authors hired by a film studio to adapt each other’s books, written in genres they can’t stand.”)

But it’s like this whole random subgenre.  Look out for the tatty Penguin greenbacks, in short.

[jingle-bones]

CANDLESHOE (Dir: Norman Tokar, 1977).


Walt Disney Poductions' Candleshoe is a comedy crime caper based upon Michael Innes' novel Christmas at Candleshoe.


Leaving the mean streets of Los Angeles, Casey Brown (Jodie Foster) heads to England to hustle the elderly Lady St Edmund (Helen Hayes) out of her dilapidated stately home Candleshoe. Within Candleshoe lays the hidden treasure of pirate Captain St Edmund to which Casey holds the first clue. In cahoots are disgraced former Candleshoe employee Clara (Vivien Pickles) and her brother Bundage (Leo Mckern) who masterminds the misdemeanour. Welcomed into the Candleshoe family, Casey turns the tables on Bundage and sets about the treasure hunt with intent to save the debt racked estate from foreclosure.


A first rate cast was assembled for this production. 15 year old Jodie Foster was fresh from her Oscar nominated turn in Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976). She does excellent work here too and it is to her credit that she is not overshadowed by the acting heavyweights in support. Most notably David Niven, donning multiple disguises as butler, gardener, chauffeur and a visiting Colonel, in what is perhaps his best late career role.

A neat premise also lifts the movie above the usual formulaic fluff the Disney Studios were producing in the late 70s. Rosemary Anne Sisson's and David Swift's screenplay mixes humour and excitement as the race is on to recover the spoils before the bad guys. Norman Tokar directs at a surprisingly steady pace, but one that allows the mystery to unfold and for characters to develop so that Casey's change of heart is completely believable.


Candleshoe’s view of a genteel England of stately homes and steam trains must have seemed downright archaic in 1977. However, in 2019 it feels innocent and charming; nostalgic for an idealised period in British history which never really existed.


With a superior story and a distinguished cast Candleshoe is easily a highlight of the Disney Studios' live-action catalogue. Equally entertaining for children and adults, this treasure hunt movie is a gem.

Visit my blog JINGLE BONES MOVIE TIME for a longer, more in-depth review of Candleshoe!

Jingle Bones Movie Time

[books0977]

Lament for A Maker. Michael Innes. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co. (1938). First American edition. Original dust jacket.

When mad recluse, Ranald Guthrie, the laird of Erchany, falls from the ramparts of his castle on a wild winter night, Appleby discovers the doom that shrouded his life, and the grim legends of the bleak and nameless hamlets, in a tale that emanates sheer terror and suspense.

[chuckbbirdsjunk]