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    Hamlet, Revenge!
    Hamlet, Revenge!
    Hamlet, Revenge!
    Ebook391 pages8 hours

    Hamlet, Revenge!

    By Michael Innes

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A Scotland Yard detective probes a high-society house party for someone rotten when a government official is murdered in this classic British mystery.

    Preparations are underway for a grand party at Scamnum Court, the sweeping English country estate of the fabulously wealthy Duke of Horton. Some of the nation’s elite are invited for dinner, and some are even set to star in a semi-amateur production of Hamlet on an authentic Elizabethan stage in the banqueting hall. No expense is spared, but one guest soon pays with his life. Before the play ends, a shot is fired, and the actor playing Polonius—Lord Auldearn, the Lord Chancellor of England—is dead.

    With war looming on the horizon, suspicions arise over the possibility of espionage. Therefore, the prime minister sends Insp. John Appleby not only to investigate, but to also find a confidential government document. Appleby is lucky there’s a mystery novelist eager to lend a hand with the extensive guest list at Scamnum Court. He will need all the help he can get if he hopes to prevent the killer from making an encore performance . . .

    “Hamlet, Revenge! confirms the fact that became clear in his first book, that Mr. Michael Innes is in a class by himself among writers of detective fiction.” —The Times Literary Supplement

    “A brilliant novel of manners. The writing is assured and lively with wit. Add to this a flawlessly constructed murder and an admirable and quite breathlessly thrilling dénouement, and we have fresh blood in the field of crime fiction with a vengeance.” —The Times (London)

    “A first-rate piece of work, intelligent, well-written, elaborate and exciting. . . . Highly recommended.” —The Spectator

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateMay 30, 2023
    ISBN9781504087926
    Hamlet, Revenge!

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    Reviews for Hamlet, Revenge!

    3.5/5

    114 ratings11 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Murder at a country home during an elaborate amateur production of Hamlet, with possible involvement of spies, and nearly 30 suspects. Warning: because one of the characters is a dark-skinned Indian, there's a disturbing amount of dated racist language. Fortunately this is a pretty skippable mystery. Overstuffed and overwritten. Dogmatic about Shakespeare where the author makes sure that everyone has the same single viewpoint of what Hamlet is all about. Intent on making the mystery as complicated as possible, which leads to interminable rundowns on the status of each of the 10 most likely suspects. Not recommended.
    • 2/5
      Giles Gott, some sort of Oxford academic, is putting on a performance of Hamlet at Scamnum Court, the seat of the Duke of Horton who is the head of the Crispin family. Gott is presenting the play in a form as close as possible to the way it would have been staged in Shakespeare's time, so the lengthy descriptions of the stage layout, while tedious and confusing, are relevant to the plot. Not much else is. There's a great deal of academic waffle, which confuses rather than elucidates, a large cast of potential murderers who are almost impossible to remember, and a complicated plot that hinges on a ludicrous motive. As a detective story this is a failure. Fortunately there is only one conversation in classical Greek, and it's short.
    • 3/5
      I didn't like this as well of the first book in the series and definitely not as much as the later books. The plot was too complicated and for me, there were a lot of loose ends. The writing was a little less academic than the previous book but it still requires a lot of knowledge of high level English education to fully enjoy. I did OK, especially because I'm familiar with Hamlet and have probably seem it more than once but I can see why these books may attract a particular audience.
    • 4/5
      Extremely complicated and over-populated with characters. The central mystery of who shot the victim while the major suspects were all onstage during a play has been copied or adapted over the years; some of those books are better than this one. There is some humor here and there to lighten things up, and a couple of well-drawn characters. The alternative solutions gambit is handled particularly well, I think.I’m not in love with Innes’s books and yet I keep on reading them. They’re quite intellectual and intelligent and the reader does get caught up in their twists and turns. A working knowledge of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is necessary to enjoy this one. Recommended for lovers of Golden Age British mysteries.
    • 4/5
      Full of fun, yet melancholy. In this second entry in the Appleby series, WWII is at the door. There are some nicely turned commentaries on the disintegration of society. Yet, the brief appearance of the Prime Minister, every part about the Scots gardener, and the excuses of the late arriving guests are hilarious. As in the previous book, the architecture and the setting play an important part and are expertly evoked and hyperbolically described. As before, Appleby is physically perfect, but unobtrusively so; in this book, he's an exceptionally fast runner and a crack shot.
    • 4/5
      Innes takes his time setting the stage, introducing us to (most of) the cast of characters in what is essentially an English country house murder mystery with a twist, as Scamnum Court is closer to a castle than a house and the Duke and Duchess of Horton have over 200 house guests (with associated servants). The pace picks up considerably once the murder occurs (during an amateur performance of Hamlet), and Inspector Appleby is sent to investigate by none other than the Prime Minister himself as there is the possibility of espionage. Only hours after arriving, Appleby is confronted with a second corpse...

      Innes' writing style is a bit dry with a hidden wit - it might not be to everyone's taste but I like it; an author who can refer to Conrad's Lord Jim and P.G. Wodehouse's Lord Emsworth on the same page and make sly references to Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot is my kind of guy! As Appleby says at one point in the investigation: "Order, method: the little grey cells!" and later, one of the house guests suggests the Duke send for "...a real detective. There is a very good man whose name I forget; a foreigner and very conceited -- but, they say, thoroughly reliable."

      This is a greater tribute than it might appear at first sight; Hamlet, Revenge! first was released in 1937 so Poirot was not nearly as well-known as he is today. My biggest complaint is that things got pretty convoluted towards the end, although the ultimate solution was satisfying and unexpected (at least by me).
    • 2/5
      It's funny how the memory can completely sell you the dummy. I know that I have read this before - I can remember discussing it with my A Level English teacher more than thirty years ago, with particular reference to the extent to which a knowledge of [Hamlet] and several other plays in the canon helped the appreciation of the is novel. However, i could remember nothing about the book itself beyond the fact that a murder occurs during the staging of a production of "Hamlet" in a stately home.I had been looking forward to re-reading this for quite some time and set it aside as a sort of Christmas treat. After all, under his real name of [[J. I. M. Stewart]], Michael Innes wrote some excellent novels, including what is perhaps my absolute favourite book EVER, [Young Pattullo] (second volume of his masterful "A Staircase in Surrey" series).Sadly, though, I found that this treat quickly degenerated into a chore: facile characterisation and a needlessly tortuous plot served to detract from any enjoyment of this so-called classic of the genre.
    • 5/5
      “Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.” – Shakespeare.And so it was. And Inspector Appleby arrives to find a man dead on the stage of a private production of Hamlet. What does it mean? Why? Why in those circumstances. Is it spies or a very private sort of revenge?I loved this book. It starts slow, and I wish I’d re-read Hamlet before hand, but when Appleby arrives en scene, the book becomes compelling.This is my sort of mystery. Very cerebral, very puzzle driven, a smart, calculating, inventive bad guy, where the clues are scarce on the ground and the only way to solve it is by deep thinking.Definitely continuing this series!
    • 4/5
      Six-word review: Cerebral whodunit explores violence as theatre.Extended review:This is a fine and exceedingly British murder mystery set at an enormous stately home in the country, with a goodly array of stock characters and several singularly notable individuals. An ample supply of red herrings and other fish contrive to throw us off the scent of the guilty party or parties while still playing fair with the clues. Inspector Appleby ultimately delivers the solution with appropriate acknowledgment of the several sharp-witted bystanders who furnish key revelations at crucial junctures.Because of the large number of characters and the complexity of the puzzle, I found the story slow to start and also a bit too busy to follow easily as it wound toward its final unmasking of villains. However, I enjoyed the chase and am still interested enough to go along with Inspector Appleby on further adventures.Many works of fiction, almost irrespective of genre, have ideologies to promote, social evils to expose, or other axes to grind, whether central to the narrative or as issues raised incidentally along the way. So there's nothing inherently unusual in this speech of one of the characters on the subject of violence:=====(Excerpt begins)Gott hesitated, as if seeking some brief expression of what lay in his mind. 'All over the world today are we not facing a rising tide of ideological intolerance, and are not violence and terrorism more and more in men's thoughts? And this dressing-up of the lawless and the primitive as a ruthless-because-right philosophy or world-picture or ideology that must and will prevail--is this not something to haunt and hold naturally unstable men, whatever their particular belief may be? The modern world is full of unwholesome armies of martyrs and inquisitors. We bind ourselves together by the million and sixty million to hate and kill--kill, as we persuade ourselves, for an idea. Are we to be surprised if here and there an individual kills simply because he hates--and simply because he hates an idea?' (1961 edition, p. 249)=====(Excerpt ends)What's striking about it is that this novel saw print in 1937--before World War II--and yet it could have been written today. A very modern sentiment, but for the fact that we no longer express ourselves so elegantly.Not so modern are the social attitudes of various characters and indeed of the narrative voice itself, especially as seen in the language used to refer to the man from India, Mr. Bose. This will bother readers who expect present-day habits of speech and thought to be reflected not only in writings of the early twentieth century but even in Shakespeare. I regret that it took Western culture so long to broaden its view of race and ethnicity, but I can't condemn older writers for failing to see past the ingrained attitudes of their time and place.Much less commonplace is the perception of another one of the characters, a psychologist named Nave. In fact, I have not seen this understanding of the act of murder expressed before, and I have no idea if it is or ever was considered valid by knowledgeable authorities. I record it here because I found it thought-provoking and worth coming back to for further reflection:=====(Excerpt begins)'...nearly every murder is a manifesto--and nearly always a manifesto--so to speak--of self, a piece of exhibitionism. The criminal looks forward to his appearance in the dock as the martyr to his martyrdom--and for exactly the same reason: it is limelight, it is a supreme manifesto of self--nothing more.' (ibid., p. 188)=====(Excerpt ends)These rather philosophical ruminations on the part of various characters and, one presumes, of the author as well add dimensions to a traditional country-house murder mystery that, in my opinion, increase interest even as they slow the pace.A reader whose latest viewing or reading of Hamlet is fairly fresh in mind will probably also find that familiarity with the play enhances enjoyment.
    • 3/5
      Good. Overlong. So I choose not to be.
    • 4/5
      Innes' second book about John Appleby is a highly tangled tale of a murder committed during a private performance of Hamlet at a stately home (with a stage like that at the Globe in Shakespeare's own day, which was a highly radical idea in the 1930s), the victim being none other than the Lord Chancellor. Mysterious messages are sent by various means, and there's a remarkably large group of suspects (the whole cast of the play). A sensitive document may have attracted the interest of some spies, but are they the murderers or just a sideshow? I found the middle section a little longwinded, but the denouement is exciting enough, with Appleby showing unsuspected skill as a marksman.

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    Hamlet, Revenge! - Michael Innes

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