An Awkward Lie

Michael Innes wrote some of his best, most easily flowing suspense novels starring highly educated young men, and "An Awkward Lie" (1971) just happens to be about his famous serial detective Sir John Appleby's son, Robert Appleby "(successful scrum-half retired, and author of that notable anti-novel `The Lumber Room')." Innes' young men are uniformly intelligent (one might even say intellectually arrogant), intrepid, and high-spirited. They tend to actively seek adventure rather than waiting for adventure to stumble over them---although, in "An Awkward Lie" Bobby Appleby does the stumbling---over a body on a golf course. He and a strange young woman both come upon a murdered man in a sand trap, and she agrees to stay put while Bobby runs off to phone the police. When Bobby and the police return to the crime scene, both the young woman and the body have disappeared. Bobby's blood is up. He had taken a liking to the young woman, and believes her to be kidnapped by the same criminals who stole the body. He also thinks he might have recognized the corpse as one of his former middle school teachers. So, off he goes with hardly a word to the police, or his famous detective-father. This rather ordinary (for Michael Innes) detective-thriller is notable for two scenes: the first where Bobby attempts to declare his affection for the young woman he met on the golf course, amidst the gigantic pipes of his school's antique septic system; the second occurs on the moonlit downs near the school, as Bobby and his new love close in on the bad guys, who are hiding out in an archeological excavation of an Iron Age chieftain's barrow. Michael Innes is one of the finest, most unjustly neglected authors from the British Golden Age of Mystery. If you haven't already discovered him, try starting with The Case of the Journeying Boy, or his very literate Appleby mystery, Hamlet, Revenge! (Inspector Appleby Mystery).