A Villa in France

by J.I.M. Stewart

Penelope, the daughter of a local priest, is lured to a villa in the south of France where she is the victim of a cruel hoax. As to how she came into the situation, we are first introduced to her as a child and the background is set out with Stewart's usual wit and highly descriptive writing. Fulke Ferneydale, now a rich novelist, knew Penelope then - indeed, in her later teenage years he suddenly proposed to her, but she turned him down. At the time, he had something of a chip on his shoulder as his father was 'in trade', which is something Penelope's father looked down upon in a snobbish manner, although it didn't affect her. Accordingly, Ferneydale went off and married Sophie, although he subsequently managed to enjoy a string of mistresses and young boys. Penelope married Caspar, but he is withdrawn, scholarly and boring, not to mention materially unsuccessful. So what is to become of her in France? There are many twists to this tale, not least the final surprise.

328 pages, Textbook Binding

First published October 28, 1982

About the author

Full name: John Innes MacKintosh Stewart
Published mysteries under the pen name of Michael Innes.
Stewart was the son of Elizabeth Jane (née Clark) and John Stewart of Nairn. His father was a lawyer and director of Education in the city of Edinburgh. Stewart attended Edinburgh Academy, where Robert Louis Stevenson had been a pupil for a short time, and later studied English literature at Oriel College, Oxford. In 1929 he went to Vienna to study psychoanalysis. He was lecturer in English at the University of Leeds from 1930 to 1935, and then became Jury Professor of English in the University of Adelaide, South Australia.

He returned to the United Kingdom to become Lecturer in English at the Queen's University of Belfast from 1946 to 1948. In 1949 he became a Student of Christ Church, Oxford. By the time of his retirement in 1973, he was a professor of the university.

Using the pseudonym Michael Innes, he wrote about forty crime novels between 1936 and 1986. Innes's detective novels are playfully highbrow, rich in allusions to English literature and to Renaissance art. Sinuous, flexible and effortlessly elegant, Stewart's prose is refreshingly free of all influence by Strunk & White. The somewhat ponderous writing style and analysis of character, particularly in the early novels, is frequently Henry Jamesian. The best-known of Innes's detective creations is Sir John Appleby (originally Inspector John Appleby) of Scotland Yard, who is a feature of multiple books. Other novels also feature the amateur but nonetheless effective sleuth, painter and Royal Academician, Charles Honeybath. The two detectives meet in "Appleby and Honeybath." Some of the later stories feature Appleby's son Bobby as sleuth.

Stewart also wrote studies of Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, and Thomas Hardy. His last publication was his autobiography Myself and Michael Innes (1987).

In 2007, his estate transferred all of Stewart's copyrights and other legal rights to Owatonna Media.