Michael Innes: Appleby's End

Michael Innes: Appleby's End (USA 2024)

From the Publisher:
A Scotland Yard detective is snowed in with a strange family and a killer with a lethal passion for literature in this classic British mystery.
Something's afoot in the village of Snarl. Incidents include animals turned to stone and ominous tombstones inscribed with deaths yet to come. Det. Insp. John Appleby is travelling by train from London to consult on the case. However, impending his arrival to his connecting train is a terrible snowstorm. Fortunately, a fellow passenger, encyclopedia author Everard Raven, invites Appleby to spend the night at his country estate.

Appleby soon has second thoughts about accepting the offer. When they get off the train, they meet more of Raven's relatives, and they are just as unusual as he is. Next, the station is alarmingly named "Appleby's End." And then one of the Ravens' servants is found dead and buried up to their neck in snow...

As Appleby investigates, he notices an unusual connection between the servant's body, the mayhem at Snarl, and even his own arrival in the village. They all resemble scenes from the novels of Everard's late father. Appleby must determine who is behind this bizarre plot before another member of the Raven household meets a literal end.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. Open Road Integrated Media, ISBN: 9781504092067 (May, 2024), 236 p., $20.99.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End (USA 2023)

Michael Innes: Appleby's End. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. Open Road Integrated Media, ISBN: 9781504087940 (May, 2023), eBook, 2 MB (ca. 236 p.), $15.99.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
Appleby's End was the name of the station where Detective Inspector John Appleby got off the train from Scotland Yard. But that was not the only coincidence. Everything that happened from then on related back to stories by Ranulph Raven, Victorian novelist - animals were replaced by marble effigies, someone received a tombstone telling him when he would die, and a servant was found buried up to his neck in snow, dead. Why did Ranulph Raven's mysterious descendants make such a point of inviting Appleby to spend the night at their house?

Michael Innes: Appleby's End. House of Stratus, ISBN: 184232716X (January, 2001), 218 p., $11.50.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End (UK 1991)

From the Publisher:
Appleby's End was the name of the station where Detective Inspector John Appleby got off the train...
And walked straight into the pages of Cold Comfort Farm.

The Raven family of Long Dream Manor were distinguished by their noses and their shabby plumage - relics of happier times when Great-uncle Ranulph Raven wrote his thrillingly Gothic stories and made Victorian England shudder.

Unhappily, Gothic frisson is now out of fashion and the family are forced to look to other means of survival. In the circumstances John Appleby can't help wondering why they insisted on inviting him to stay. Or why the similarities to Ranulph's stories are so thick on the ground -- animals replaced by marble effigies, a tombstone inscribed with the date of death of a living person, a servant found buried up to his neck in snow. Stonecold dead. Surely life isn't imitating art?

Michael Innes reserves the twist in his dexterous and cunning story to the very end.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End. Penguin Classic Crime, ISBN: 014011517X (March, 1991), 188 p., £3.99.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End (USA 1975)

From the Publisher:
COWS TURNING INTO MARBLE! A SEVERED HEAD GLISTENING IN THE SNOW! A TOMBSTONE WITH THE NAME-AND DATE OF DEATH-OF A LIVING MAN!
Bizarre visions -- mentioned in the writings of the late Ranulph Raven -- were happening in real life!

Enter Appleby of Scotland Yard, sent to investigate Raven's strange brood of descendants at the family home near Snarl. But the great detective can hardly remain a detached observer when he suddenly discovers that the trains no longer run to Snarl, and that he is forced to get off at a stop called:
APPLEBYS END

Michael Innes' latest "adventure in crime is sure of instant success... fantastic is the word." The New York Times

Michael Innes: Appleby's End. Would the man from Scotland Yard investigate his own murder? Ballantine Mystery No. 24409 (February, 1975), 218 p., $1.25

Michael Innes: Appleby's End (UK 1969)

From the Publisher:
Appleby's End was the name of the station where Detective-Inspector John Appleby got off the train from Scotland Yard.
That could have been a coincidence. But, from then on, coincidences came too often, too fast and too many to be genuine.

Everything that happened related back to stories by Ranulph Raven, Victorian novelist. Animals were replaced by marble effigies. Someone received a tombstone that told him when he would die. A servant was found buried up to his neck in snow - dead. Even Appleby's End, it turned out, was a story by Ranulph Raven. And why did Ranulph Raven's mysterious descendants make a point of inviting Appleby to spend the night at their house?

Maybe Appleby's End was in sight.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End. London: Penguin, 1969, 218 p., 25p 5/-.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End (USA 1965)

From the Publisher:
DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR JOHN APPLEBY WAS FAR FROM THE SCENE OF THE CRIME.
The fantastic crime had been committed in the snow-bound hamlet of Snarl, but Appleby found himself sidetracked for the night in the manor house of Long Dream, miles away. Glumly he settled down with a long-forgotten novel written by his host's celebrated father.

Instead of sending him to sleep, however, the book gave him the shock of his life: a fictional clue to the factual crime he was on his way to investigate!

Rich in the erudite humor and improbable events for which its author is famous, Appleby's End is another Michael Innes classic in the tradition of his Hamlet, Revenge!, also published as a Collier Book. A scholar, lecturer, and critic, JOHN I. M. STEWART is known to mystery readers as Michael Innes. His other Collier Books are Lament for a Maker and The Case of Sonia Wayward.

Michael Innes: Appleby's End. New York: Collier Books, 1965, 191 p., 95c.