Merry Christmas Everybody

There Came Both Mist and Snow

by Michael Innes

I have been reading a lot of classic 20th century crime fiction for a few years. Some good, some less so, some that stands up well to a 21st century reading and some that feels a little more dated. This title I was drawn to by the excellent cover and that it was a ‘seasonal’ tale i.e. Christmas. The fact that NetGalley gave me a copy for free was also encouraging!
 

Michael Innes wrote a quite large series of novels based around one character, Sir John Appleby and to be honest, just like classic crime, some are good and some less so.
Although the book is short, the plot really takes quite a while to get going and in the lead up to the action the book consists almost entirely of overly smart, flippant dialogue which becomes quite tiresome very quickly. I became more than a little bored.
Throughout the book the writing, although sharp and erudite, is a little too tongue-in-cheek for my liking and I found that it did not take too long for the flippancy to become irritating. Maybe I should have been expecting this as the alternative title for this novel is A Comedy of Terrors…  I wonder why they changed it for the new publication?

That’s not to say that there is not some things to like in the novel; once Appleby arrives and the plot eventually gets going it is fairly entertaining and creates a good puzzle but the characters are mere sketches and the dark aspect of the incident is treated very lightly and almost with humour; although it could be said that these complaints could be levelled at of many of the author’s contemporaries. The mistake may be that after reading a superb Georges Simenon book I directly followed with this one, which possibly highlighted the limitations in the story and the less distinct voice of the author.

Overall I did enjoy There Came Both Mist And Snow but probably mainly because of the seasonal setting of the story and the fact that I read it over the Christmas period. My feeling is that this was written as a warm, ‘novelty’ Christmas story for fans of Sir John Appleby as the other Michael Innes that I have read either have a little more weight to them or are compleltely off the wall crazy.  Starting to love him!