John Appleby | |
---|---|
First appearance | Death at the President's Lodging |
Last appearance | Appleby Talks About Crime |
Created by | Michael Innes |
In-universe information | |
Gender | Male |
Occupation | Police officer |
Nationality | British |
Sir John Appleby is a fictional detective created by Michael Innes in the 1930s who appeared in many novels and short stories.
Appleby had perhaps the longest career of any of the great detectives. In Silence Observed he states that his age is fifty-three, which, if the action of the book takes place in the year of publication, would mean that he was born in 1907 or 1908. This is contradicted in The Gay Phoenix where he says that he was 29 when he married. He becomes engaged in Appleby's End , published 1945, which would mean that he was born in 1916.
Appleby's background remains enigmatic although certain clues emerge in several novels. He was born in Kirkby Overblow (as mentioned in Hare Sitting Up ) and brought up in a back street in a Midlands town (Appleby's Other Story). His grandfather had been a baker and he himself had won a scholarship to university ( There Came Both Mist and Snow ).
He first appeared as a youthful Detective Inspector from Scotland Yard in Death at the President's Lodging (Seven Suspects in the United States) in 1936. He retired from Scotland Yard at a very early age just after World War II, on marrying Judith Raven, a sculptor first encountered in Appleby's End . He had two younger sisters, Patricia ( Stop Press ) and Jane ( Operation Pax ), both of whom figure prominently in one novel each and then are never mentioned again.
He then reappeared as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, a position rewarded by a knighthood. Although he later retired to Long Dream Manor, his wife's family home in the countryside, he continued to solve crimes well into the 1980s, his last appearance being in Appleby and the Ospreys in 1986, 50 years after his fictional debut. For a couple of the later tales his son Bobby serves as the chief protagonist.
In 2010, eighteen previously uncollected short stories appeared in Appleby Talks About Crime.
Appleby is mentioned in the Edmund Crispin novel Holy Disorders and the Isaac Asimov Union Club short story "The Three Goblets."
A Connoisseur's Case and Lesson in Anatomy were adapted for the 1960s BBC anthology series Detective , with Appleby being played by Dennis Price and Ian Ogilvy, respectively. [1] [2]
Two of the Appleby stories were adapted for BBC Radio's Saturday Night Theatre: Appleby's End in 1982, with John Hurt, and Lament for a Maker in 1988, with Michael MacKenzie. [3] [4]
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Death at the President's Lodging is a 1936 detective novel by the British writer Michael Innes. It was the first in a series of novels featuring John Appleby, a Detective Inspector in the Metropolitan Police. It is a traditional closed circle of suspects mystery, taking place in a fictitious Oxbridge college located in Bletchley about halfway between Cambridge and Oxford on the Varsity Line. It was released in the United States by Dodd, Mead under the alternative title Seven Suspects.
Appleby Talking is a collection of detective short stories by the British writer Michael Innes published in 1954. John Appleby, a Golden Age Scotland Yard detective, features in all twenty three stories. The series of novels had run since Death at the President's Lodging in 1936, but this was the first time shorter stories about Appleby's cases had been collected in a single volume. It was followed by a second collection Appleby Talks Again in 1956. It was published in the United States under the alternative title Dead Man's Shoes.
Lament for a Maker is a 1938 detective novel by the British writer Michael Innes. It is the third in his series featuring John Appleby, a young Detective Inspector in the Metropolitan Police. It was published during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. The title refers to the Lament for the Makaris by the Scottish poet William Dunbar, which is constantly recited by one of the characters. The novel features a string of first person narratives of the events that takes place, which each character drawing a conclusion that builds on and also corrects the previous writer.