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The Daffodil Affair
Most of the handful of Inneses I've read so far have Appleby coming to or coming upon a stately home of some description- sometimes smaller, sometimes half ruined- where people proceed to be murdered. So it was nice for once to start a London-set mystery, except that in very short order things went-- well, if you don’t know Pratchett, Google 'Pratchett Summoning Dark images'. Things went like *that*. We're in wartime London, bombs falling all around, so of course we send two seniorish policemen off across the Atlantic on the trail of a psychic horse that can count. Not to aid the war effort either. Just because some aristocratic lady wants the horse found. I mean yes the past is a foreign country etc and I've read enough (in Rickman and elsewhere) about how the upper classes could get away with even more then than they can now, but still. I'd expect class privilege to be suspended for the duration
Am I to assume from that fourth wall breaking comment that early Innes does this sort of thing often? If so, I'll be more careful with my copyright dates.
But the weirdest thing of all is that I've read this book before and remembered nothing of it. Not the psychic horse, not the witch's cauldron, not Samuel Johnson and his servant Francis Barber failing to see the ghost in a haunted house. Not until I got to Appleby and the girl with several personalities did I realize that yes, I knew this book. And remembered that scene after all these decades because at the time I was certain it doesn't work like that. And still am.
Am I to assume from that fourth wall breaking comment that early Innes does this sort of thing often? If so, I'll be more careful with my copyright dates.
But the weirdest thing of all is that I've read this book before and remembered nothing of it. Not the psychic horse, not the witch's cauldron, not Samuel Johnson and his servant Francis Barber failing to see the ghost in a haunted house. Not until I got to Appleby and the girl with several personalities did I realize that yes, I knew this book. And remembered that scene after all these decades because at the time I was certain it doesn't work like that. And still am.