Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker (USA 2024)

From the Publisher:
A London detective investigates when a troubled Scottish laird takes a fall in this classic British mystery by the author of Hamlet, Revenge!.
Strange things are happening around the remote Castle Erchany, located in the Scottish Highlands. The miserly and reclusive laird, Ranald Guthrie, roams the castle's freezing halls, reciting an old poem over and over: Timor mortis conturbat me. Fear of death disturbs me...

Then on a wild winter night, Guthrie plummets to his death from his castle's tower. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? Or was it murder?

Suspicion falls on a local man, but when Insp. John Appleby arrives from the Met in London, he doubts this solution. To discover the truth, Appleby immerses himself in the dead man's final days in a gloomy, gothic castle. Of course, he must be on his guard, because there's no telling whether someone else might fall victim to another "accident."

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. Open Road Integrated Media, ISBN: 9781504092029 (February, 2024), ca 270 p., $22.99.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker (USA 2023)

Then on a wild winter night, Guthrie plummets to his death from his castle's tower. Was it an accident? Was it suicide? Or was it murder?

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. Open Road Integrated Media, ISBN: 9781504087902 (May, 2023), eBook, 2 MB (ca 270 p.), $14.99.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
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...

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. House of Stratus, ISBN: 1842327410 (January, 2001), 286 p., $11.50.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker (USA 1990)

From the Publisher:
"Mr. Innes, already a ranking baffler, achieves the surprising stunt of outdoing himself in this one." - Books
Michael Innes, ranked "in a class by himself among writers of detective fiction" by the Times Literary Supplement (London), has produced what is generally accepted as his supreme achievement in Lament for a Maker, which is widely considered one of the most beautifully written detective novels of all time. Scotland is the setting for murder, and once again Sir John Appleby is the investigator.

"Mr. Innes gives us in this, his best book, a situation compounded of Aeschylus and Drury Lane melodrama... He tells the story through the mouths of five of his characters in turn... [You] will be delighted by the colour, pathos and humour of his narrative... by the consummate skill with which he offers several plausible solutions of the mystery, each one developing naturally out of the last." - Nicholas Blake, The Spectator

"Lament for a Maker is such an original piece of grisly fascination as we may seek, perhaps, only from an inventive scholarly, witty and poetic mind; Michael Innes... has that sort of mind; and he has done his most dramatic work here." - New York Times

"Magnificently written." - Times Literary Supplement (London)

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker. A Sir John Appleby Mystery. Harper & Row / Perennial Library, ISBN: 0060810416 (May, 1990), 286 p., $4.95.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker (UK 1973)

From the Publisher:
An eccentric, close-fisted laird, his beautiful niece and an evil retainer inhabit a rat-infested castle set in a wild, lonely part of Scotland still bitter with foray, feud and Covenant.

After the unexpected arrival of some guests on Christmas Eve, the laird sways and topples from the tower, hurtling to death in the moat below. Murder? Or suicide in an attempt to incriminate the niece's lover? Or...?

Detective-inspector Appleby has rarely faced so bizarre and complex a case.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker. Harmondworth: Penguin, 1973, ISBN: 0140035982, 235 p., 35p.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker (UK 1964)

From the Publisher:
The strange tale of the mad laird of Erchany and the doom that wrapped itself around his life. A fall from the ramparts of his castle on a wild mid-winter night and the grim legends and fore-doomec love of the bleak and nameless hamlets create an atmosphere of mystery, terror and suspense.

"Here is the best news for many months for detective story lovers. Michael Innes, going on from good to better has put himself right among the masters." DAILY HERALD

"Remarkable for strong and clear characterisation and... those distinctive qualities of the detection suspense and mystery logically developed to a reasonable conclusion." THE GUARDIAN

"Michael Innes has the power to keep one's flesh on the creep and shudders running up and down one's spine." TRIBUNE

"This is the kind of book we want, to raise the level of the detective story. Strongly recommended." JOHN O'LONDON'S

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker. A Sir John Appleby Mystery. London: New English Library, 1964, Four Square Books 1195, 219 p., 3'6.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker (USA 1961)

From the Publisher:
The mysterious Laird of Erchany Castle, considered mad by all except Christine, his beautiful ward, fingers his hoard of gold and cries out the ancient dirge, "Lament for the Makers."

Author Innes weaves a tale of grim humor and mystery around the Laird's castle, each detail deepening the suspense. Set in a rich Scottish background, this tour de force, the most widely acclaimed of Innes' work, has long been unavailable. Readers will welcome its return and will see again why Innes is among the most highly regarded of all mystery writers.

"An original piece of grisly fascination. Witty and inventive... his most dramatic work." -- The New York Times

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker. A mystery tale in the grand tradition, about a madman's preoccupation with death - set in ancient Scotland. New York: Collier Books, 1961, Collier Books Mystery AS14X, 222 p., 95¢.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker (USA 1938)

From the Publisher:
It was cold, that Christmas, in the Castle of Glen Erchany. The wind whined through the crumbling battlements and whipped the snow against the ancient walls. The girl and the old servant moved nervously through the barren halls, peering into the shadowy comers, frightened at the strange mood of Ranald Guthrie, Lord of the Castle. Suddenly, their forebodings were answered -- answered by the grim sight of a shadowy bulk which rottered on the edge of the tower parapet - then plunged swiftly downward into the snowccovered moat below.

Skilfully Michael Innes presents the varieous characters who figure in the mystery -- the village shoemaker, the chance visitor, the local curate, the man from Scotland Yard and, most of all, the erratic old laird, chanting his weird poetry of lament, parrying with his ancient foil phantom blows of an antagonist his own fears had created. With studied ingenuity he develops his brilliantly conceived plot and brings it to a stunning climax, doubly dramatic in its last minute surprise.

This extraordinary novel more than justifies the promise shown in Michael Innes' two earlier detective stories, SEVEN SUS-PECTS and HAMLET, REVENGE! LAMENT FOR A MAKER is not only a top-notch mystery story: it is a notable tour de force in the macabre. Rich in detail, tremendously enhanced by the many strongly developed personalities. it is a cleverly constructed, modern study of horror and impending doom.

Michael Innes: Lament for a Maker. A Mystery Novel. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1938, 219 p., $2.00.