Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard (USA 2024)

From the Publisher:
A Scotland Yard detective investigates a peculiar case of murder, poetry, kidnapping, and German spies in this classic British wartime thriller.
Insp. John Appleby is puzzled by the death of Philip Ploss. Who would want to kill such a harmless, quiet man known for writing mid-level nature poetry?...

Poetry is what Sheila Grant overhears two men discussing on a train outside Edinburgh. Their whole conversation seems absurd to her, especially after one of them misquotes the poet Swinburne. Unfortunately, her discovery quickly places her in danger...

Meanwhile back in London, Appleby learns of a kidnapping on a train in Scotland and senses a connection to Ploss's murder. Locating Sheila will certainly lead Appleby to Ploss's killer, but only if he finds her alive...

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. Open Road Integrated Media, ISBN: 9781504092005 (April, 2024), 206 p., $18.99.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard (USA 2023)

From the Publisher:
A Scotland Yard detective investigates a peculiar case of murder, poetry, kidnapping, and German spies in this classic British wartime thriller.
Insp. John Appleby is puzzled by the death of Philip Ploss. Who would want to kill such a harmless, quiet man known for writing mid-level nature poetry?...

Poetry is what Sheila Grant overhears two men discussing on a train outside Edinburgh. Their whole conversation seems absurd to her, especially after one of them misquotes the poet Swinburne. Unfortunately, her discovery quickly places her in danger...

Meanwhile back in London, Appleby learns of a kidnapping on a train in Scotland and senses a connection to Ploss's murder. Locating Sheila will certainly lead Appleby to Ploss's killer, but only if he finds her alive...

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. Open Road Integrated Media, ISBN: 9781504087889 (May, 2023), eBook, 2 MB (ca. 206 p.), $14.99.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard (USA 2001)

From the Publisher:
Successful minor poet, Philip Ploss, lives a peaceful existence in ideal surroundings, until his life is upset when he hears verses erroneously quoted as his own. Soon afterwards, he is found dead in the library with a copy of Dante's Purgatory open before him.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard. House of Stratus, ISBN: 1842327534 (April, 2001), 190 p., $9.95.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard (UK 1994)

From the Publisher:
Who would want to kill Philip Ploss? A minor poet of wholesome verse, Ploss lived a rural idyll at Lark Manor, just close enough to London for the odd literary dinner. Even the manner of his death seemed peaceful. He was discovered sitting tranquilly in his garden gazebo. One could almost have missed the bullet-hole in the middle of his forehead.

Enter John Appleby -- and the pace hots up as his investigations take him to the Scottish highlands. There he must cope with an orgy of transvestism, a missing mathematician, foreign spies and a secret formula in a collection of hastily scrawled 'Caravaggios'. Thrills, chases and adventures abound, but the imperturbable Appleby is, as ever, on top of the situation.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard. Victor Gollancz, ISBN: 0575057106 (April, 1994), 286 p., £4.99.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard (USA 1982)

From the Publisher:
Our lovely heroine and her various accomplices are the object of a superb chase across Scotland by a scheming band of undercover Nazis. Sir John Appleby of Scotland Yard -- a master craftsman in the art of crime and counterespionage -- comes to the rescue, and the British Empire stands secure once more.

"Innes is quite skilled at presenting the traumas of the fugitive who...finds that there is a darker side to the everyday world and that not every good Samaritan is to be trusted." -- Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writer

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard. Harper & Row, ISBN: 0060805846 (June, 1982), Perennial Library P-584 (?), 286 p., $2.95.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard (USA 1965)

From the Publisher:
APPLEBY IN SHINING ARMOR
A mild-mannered Minor Poet, murdered as he sits quietly in his gazebo; a Beautiful, Brave Girl, missing from a train in the Scottish Highlands; a Very Important Brain, losing himself, as is his wont, to do some solitary thinking.

"It will take a clever cop to make much of it," says the Young Man with the Slingshot, not aware of how apropos his comment is. Or, of just how clever the cop, Sir John Appleby of New Scotland Yard can be -- to the great good luck of the Brave Girl, the Very Important Brain, and the Young Man.

The Minor Poet, alas, must R.I.P...

"For sheer excitement and picturesque melodrama, 'The Secret Vanguard' will delight everyone." -- New Statesman

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard. An Insepctor Appleby Mystery. New York: Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1965, Berkley Medallion F-1030, 160 p., 50¢.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard (UK 1968)

From the Publisher:
Philip Ploss, minor poet of private means, was sitting peacefully in his garden gazebo. So peacefully, they almost missed the builet-hole in the middle of his forehead. A still-life study which affords Appleby a certain intellectual stimulus...

Both stimulus and response: for some misquoted lines of Swinburne lead him through an orgy of transvestism in the Scottish highlands to a missing mathematician, a wasp's nest of foreign spies, and a secret formula hidden in a collection of hastily scrawled 'Caravaggios'.

Michael Innes: The Secret Vanguard. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, 286 p., 3'6.