Michael Innes: A Family Affair (USA 2002)

From the Publisher:
Over a period of twenty years, a series of highly elaborate art hoaxes have been perpetrated at carefully time intervals, and in each case, the victim has a very good reason for keeping quiet. Inspector Appleby's interest is kindled by an amusing dinner-party anecdote - when he enlists the help of his wife and son, the ensuing investigation is truly a family affair. The scenes shift swiftly between glorious stately homes and the not-so-glorious art gallery of the irrepressibly dubious Hildebert Braunkopf.

Michael Innes: A Family Affair. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. House of Stratus, ISBN: 184232733X (July, 2002), 202 p., $11.50.

Michael Innes: A Family Affair (UK 1972)

From the Publisher:
Five daring and highly elaborate art hoaxes have been perpetrated at carefully timed intervals over twenty years. In each case the victim has a very good reason for keeping quiet... Appleby's interest is first kindled by an amusing after-dinner anecdote told at his son Bobby's undergraduate dining club at Oxford.

The ensuing investigation is truly 'A Family Affair': Appleby enlists help from his wife and Bobby. The scene shifts swiftly between various stately homes and the far-from-stately art gallery of the irrepressibly dubious Hildebert Braunkopf, gathering momentum towards a tragi-farcical climax of baroque proportions...

Michael Innes: A Family Affair. Penguin, ISBN: 0140033718 (January, 1972), 184 p., 30p.

Michael Innes: Picture of Guilt (USA 1970)

From the Publisher:
THE THIEVES TOOK THEIR TIME
The high-class victims are afraid to call the police.
The police are afraid of offending royalty. And the thieves are ready to strike again...

Five baffling art frauds have taken place in fifteen years. Behind them are mastermind criminals who like to indulge a taste for the freakish and bizarre-and to take their time.

But Sir John Appleby, retired Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, has a taste for challenges, and he finds this one irresistible. The trap he sets for the thieves begins with a hilarious campus disturbance that turns into the sixth swindle-and ends in a surprisingly grim denouementhat not even Appleby could have predicted.

"So persuasively does Mr. Innes pile incident on incident, with skill, picturesqueness, a touch of the raffish, that he holds us hypnotized..." Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Michael Innes: Picture of Guilt. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. New York: Berkley, 1970 (A Berkley medallion book X798), 189 p., 60c.