Book Review: The Mysterious Commission

The Mysterious Commission
Michael Innes (J.I.M. Stewart)
Mystery

There were quite a few respectable mid-century Englishpersons who moonlighted as detective novelists. "Nicholas Blake", for example, was actually Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate (and father of the actor Daniel Day-Lewis). To this tribe belongs "Michael Innes": J.I.M. Stewart, academic literary critic and student of J. R. R. Tolkien at Oxford.

The "Innes" novels, from early to late--and this one is quite late--all have a certain flavor to them. It's not easy to describe. Irony is a big part of it, but it's an understated irony. Imagination, sometimes run wild, is there too. I'm tempted to call the writing "urbane", but that sounds a little too mannered. It's a little bit gently snobbish, quite witty, and even  . . . gulp . . . cozy. That latter word has been co-opted latterly by a mystery subgenre that would mostly be better described as "cutesy", which is a pity, because otherwise it would fit the Innes model well.

That aside, The Mysterious Commission is an enjoyable little book. The protagonist is a portrait painter, rather than Innes's usual Sir John Appleby, and the artistic side of the story is nicely handled. There's some good puzzlement and some funny bits. The air goes out a little bit in the last chapter, for the simple reason that the baddies could have accomplished their goals in a much more straightforward fashion. Getting there, however, is at least half the fun. The writing is usually good enough to carry an Innes novel even when the premise is a little lacking in credibility. This one isn't a classic, not even a minor classic, but it's an enjoyable read nonetheless.