Death at the President's Lodging by Michael Innes

Death at the President’s Lodging  masquerades as a comfortable, vintage mystery (albeit more cerebral than most). The pace is slow as you watch the detective painstakingly interview each suspect; in Chapter 45 the intellectual fireworks start going off and you can hardly believe how the whole thing plays out. 

Inspector Appleby is called in to solve the mysterious murder of the president of St. Abbot’s College. It seems to be an “inside job” '(meaning one of the professors did it). Appleby is intrigued with the opportunity to interact with men of superior intelligence:

[But] He had an uneasy feeling that his own favorite technique, which was that of sitting back and watching and listening, was somehow inadequate – dangerous, indeed – in this case; something more aggressive was required. In discussion, all these people would be endlessly plausible – and they would hardly ever make a mistake.

I can't share any more of the plot without spoilers, so I'll just reiterate that Death at the President’s Lodging is one of the most stunning pieces of detective fiction I’ve ever read. It made me an instant admirer of Michael Innes (pen name for Scottish novelist and literary critic, John Innes Mackintosh Stewart).

Thank you, P.D. James for introducing me to this author through your book on detective fiction. Thanks to Kindle Unlimited, I was able to read the first book for “free”. Now I look forward to reading the rest of the series.

Blessings,