Candleshoe

John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (pseudonym Michael Innes) was born in 1906 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was educated at Edinburgh Academy and Oriel College, Oxford, and his mysteries reflect both his scholarship, and the year he spent in Vienna, studying Freudian psychoanalysis. He writes like a combination of Jane Austin (Very English comedy of manners), Robert Louis Stevenson (hair-raising adventure story), and Prospero (this reader at least, is always hovering on the edge of 'could this really happen, or is a wizard about to pop out of the ancient, worm-eaten woodwork?')"Candleshoe" features an eccentric, seventeenth century sculptor named Gerard Christmas, 'discovered' by wealthy Americans, Grant Feather and his mother who are touring England and viewing a miscellany of manors, monuments, three-decker Jacobean pulpits, and churches with Owl-and-Ivy work. The main difference between the Feathers and most other tourists is that Grant's mother is on the hunt for a stately home to purchase, or as she explains her requirements: "something that you yourself rescue from oblivion, and that quite perfectly recalls its own epoch because it has been...uninterfered with ever since."They stumble upon the Jacobean manor, Candleshoe almost by accident and Grant's mother is enchanted. Here is the rundown English mansion of her dreams, owned by a very ancient lady without direct heirs, who reminisces fondly of Queen Victoria's Albert in his prime.But who are the quaintly dressed children who seem to have the run of the place, and why are they armed with bows and arrows?Michael Innes is always at his best when describing eccentric English gentry, their stately and often-crumbling homes, and the art that they have contrived to collect over the centuries. Quite naturally in his mysteries, the art also attracts art thieves--in this novel there are thieves of both the eighteenth- and twentieth-century variety, and the latter have somehow armed themselves with a tank.Will good triumph over evil? Will bows and arrows triumph over modern artillery?Only in Innes.

This is the first Michael Innes book I read, and is still my favourite. The story centres on Candleshoe, an English manor house inhabited by two very old people and various children, soon after the second world war. The children's imagination, the adults' nostalgia, and the building itself cause a certain lack of temporal focus in the residents' lifestyle. The book is about how the 20th century suddenly intrudes on this household and changes everything. It reads like a fantasy, but in fact nothing impossible happens. The book is very well-written, and Michael Innes delights in using unusual words. It's quite poetic in parts, but the plot moves along at a good pace and there are touches of humour. Read it if you like a story that has both atmosphere and excitement, and is a little out of the ordinary.