Product Description

Meteorites fall from the sky but seldom onto the heads of science dons in redbrick universities; yet this is what happens to Professor Pluckrose of Nestfield University. Inspector Appleby soon discovers that the meteorite was not fresh and that the professor's deckchair had been placed underneath a large, accessible tower - he already knew something of academic jealousies but he was to find out a great deal more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1841125 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 238 pages

About the Author
Born in Edinburgh in 1906, the son of the city's Director of Education, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart wrote a highly successful series of mystery stories under the pseudonym Michael Innes. Innes was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, where he was presented with the Matthew Arnold Memorial Prize and named a Bishop Frazer's scholar. After graduation he went to Vienna, to study Freudian psychoanalysis for a year and following his first book, an edition of Florio's translation of Montaigne, was offered a lectureship at the University of Leeds. In 1932 he married Margaret Hardwick, a doctor, and they subsequently had five children including Angus, also a novelist. The year 1936 saw Innes as Professor of English at the University of Adelaide, during which tenure he wrote his first mystery story, 'Death at the President's Lodging'. With his second, 'Hamlet Revenge', Innes firmly established his reputation as a highly entertaining and cultivated writer. After the end of World War II, Innes returned to the UK and spent two years at Queen's University, Belfast where in 1949 he wrote the 'Journeying Boy', a novel notable for the richly comedic use of an Irish setting. He then settled down as a Reader in English Literature at Christ Church, Oxford, from which he retired in 1973. His most famous character is 'John Appleby', who inspired a penchant for donnish detective fiction that lasts to this day. Innes's other well-known character is 'Honeybath', the painter and rather reluctant detective, who first appeared in 1975 in 'The Mysterious Commission'. The last novel, 'Appleby and the Ospreys', was published in 1986, some eight years before his death in 1994. 'A master - he constructs a plot that twists and turns like an electric eel: it gives you shock upon shock and you cannot let go.' - Times Literary Supplement.

Customer Reviews

The twice-landed meteorite
The setting of "The Weight of the Evidence" (1943) is undoubtedly a product of the many years that Michael Innes (whose real name was John Innes Mackintosh Stewart) spent laboring in the halls of academia. Among the seats of learning where he taught are Queen's University in Belfast, and the universities of Oxford, Adelaide, and Leeds.

The author could not help but involve a legion of eccentric, pompous, and even murderous professors in his narrative and their quarrels (the matter of the shared telephone), naps (a fatal pastime for Professor Pluckrose), and hobbies (Pluckrose appeared to have been smashed by his 'own' meteorite, which was a sort of poetic justice since he had originally stolen it from the Duke of Nesfield) are a good part of what makes this book sparkle. Since this mystery takes place in one of England's provincial universities, Innes also cocks an occasional snoot at its parvenu ways: "The staff--a word which at Oxford or Cambridge might be used of persons employed in a hotel--is not accommodated in spacious common rooms or cozy suites."

After Professor Pluckrose is found under his meteorite in his usual napping spot in the courtyard of Nesfield University, Inspector Appleby and his provincial comrade-in-arms, Hobhouse set out to examine the clues of the numerous false beards, the green bust, the false passports and the polygamous student, the darkroom maze, the meteorite, and of course, the murder. And by the way, who turned on the courtyard fountain just as the Dean was passing by?

All of these elements must come together before book's end when Appleby reveals the solution to this complicated puzzle.

If you haven't already discovered Michael Innes, "The Weight of the Evidence" is a good place to start among his donnish Appleby mysteries, although my personal favorite is "Death at the President's Lodging" (1936) if only because its setting bears a close resemblance to Oxford University.