Michael Innes: The Bloody Wood (USA 2002)

From the Publisher:
An assorted party of guests have gathered at Charne, home of Charles Martineau and his ailing wife, Grace, including Sir John Appleby and his wife, Judith. Appleby's suspicions are soon aroused with the odd behaviour of Charles, and the curious last request of Grace - who desires that upon her death, Charles marries her favourite niece, Martine. When Charles and Grace die on the same day, foul play is suspected.

Michael Innes: The Bloody Wood. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. House of Stratus, ISBN: 1842327259 (July, 2002), 182 p., $11.50.

Michael Innes: The Bloody Wood (UK 1968)

From the Publisher:
The setting is a gross parody. The house party in the country house with its lawns and terraces... and the nightingales singing in the copse on the hill. But the hostess is a dying woman and her guests have expectations; the town is lapping up to the village; you can hear the traffic on the arterial road in between the nightingales' songs.

...And those nightingales. They provide Appleby with the thread which leads to the heart of perhaps the most unpleasant tangle of events in his whole career.

Michael Innes: The Bloody Wood. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968, Penguin C280, 157 p., 4'-.

Michael Innes: The Bloody Wood (USA 1967)

From the Publisher:
Among those present-
It's not every murderer who can have Sir John Appleby, the distinguished Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, on the scene immediately before -- and again, very soon after -- he strikes. But whoever dunnit at Charne, the country estate of the Martineaus, was apparently only the more challenged by the fact of Appleby's presence.

It was not the first time a murderer got carried away -- by thoughts of his own cleverness -- to his own destruction.

"There is hardly anyone (in mysteries or mainstream) more exquisitely literate, allusive and Jamesian -- and hardly anyone with a firmer sense of melodramatic plot or a more vigorous gift of storytelling..." -- Anthony Boucher, New York Times

Michael Innes: The Bloody Wood. An Inspector Appleby Mystery. Berkley Medallion X1415 (June, 1967), 223 p., 60c.