Inviting Appleby to try out the son et lumière equipment at a stately home, his host finds a body in the control room. As more bodies are found over the next couple of days the theory that it was the accidental electrocution of a tramp looking for shelter for the night is no longer tenable.

As ever it's Appleby's urbanity and Innes's language that make it fun to read rather than the mystery itself. ( )

One of the better Appleby mysteries I've read so far. Well paced, lots of red herrings, and a healthy dose of humor. ( )

3½* Fun entry in the Inspector Appleby series. One aspect bothered me a little - Appleby seemed to reach the solution by intuition rather than detection & logic. ( )

It is really fun to read Michael Innes; mostly because you can't get more than a few paragraphs before you're wondering, "what on earth does that word mean?" and hoping that you've got the gist from the context.

Appleby has hit retirement age at the point of this story, which makes it a nice slow-paced one for those who aren't insistent that every detective have an Archie Goodwin involved. The puzzle teeters towards the over-convoluted, but the scenery is wonderfully drawn, and it's very enjoyable to work towards solving the mystery.

I thought that Appleby missed an obvious key question earlier in the book that would have cut out fifty pages or so, but then my copy only comes in at around 160 already, which by today's standards makes it hardly there at all. A short read, but of course it's made up for since you have to follow Innes' phenomenal command of his language. One of the finest mystery writers of a fine generation of them, and probably the most intellectual of them all. ( )