This is not a bad mystery but unfortunately it didn't age well and it shows the influx of the time when it was written.
It is more interesting as a documentation of a specific historical time than as a mystery.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Ipso Books ( )

Not the best of the series. Scotland and spies! ( )

In 1939, a minor poet called Philip Ploss is murdered at his home near London and a young Scottish woman travelling to visit relatives near Perth hears somebody on the train misquoting Swinburne. The connection puts her in deadly danger.

Part mystery and part spy story in the style of "The Thirty-Nine Steps", for me it's not one of Innes's best, though I am always willing to enter his world of urbane intellectuals and characters hovering on the borders between eccentricity and outright lunacy. This world probably never existed but as a teenager I desperately wanted to be part of it. ( )

This fifth Appleby book starts off as a typical police procedural -- with a corpse and a policeman. However, it quickly veers off into a spy thriller somewhat reminiscent of John Buchan. Enjoyable but a bit dated. ( )

Fantastic WWII spy mystery. A lovely literary romp. ( )