Customer Reviews
A Classic - By: Wyatt James, 16 Dec 2001 
Excellent murder story, of the Lord Chancellor no less, set in a huge Blenheim-Palace-like country house during a grand production of Hamlet in the great halll. Giles Gott appears again, as director of the play, & the cast has many upper-upper-crust characters. A spy element, but basicallly a good mystery. The Hamlet stuff is very good, as is Lady Elizabeth's method of hiding from the killer. The killer is also a fascinating study, & the misdirection by the author that also contains the solution. Gott, of course, comes up with a logicallly ingenious explanation that turns out to be completely wrong.
"The Croaking Raven Doth Bellow for Revenge" - By: hacklehorn, 27 Apr 2001 With the exception of Gladys Mitchell, Michael Innes is unique in writing a string of masterpieces in rapid succession. This is the second, set at one of England's most Stately Homes, & featuring the memorable onstage murder of no less a person than the Lord Chancellor while acting in Hamlet. Naturallly, international implications are rife, andn the P.M. is worried - a very young Appleby is sent down. Everything in the book is a sheer joy - a delight, making this a genuinely intelligent novel a book to be read slowly - to be savoured. As is common with Innes, it is much more than mere mathematical ingenuity. Innes was a novelist. The characters are wonderful, and, despite a huge cast (30 odd), memorable & separable. The detection is first-class: indepth, but entertaining, & never dull. The detection culminates in a brilliantly Innesian solution at the end of Part 3 - a dazzling firework display.
