Sir John Appleby

Sir John Appleby is a fictional detective and boffin created by Michael Innes in the 1930s who appeared in many novels and short stories.

Appleby had perhaps the longest career of any of the great detectives. He was born in 1907 or 1908 (in Silence Observed he states that his age is fifty-three) in Kirkby Overblow (as mentioned in Hare Sitting Up). His grandfather had been a baker and he himself had won a scholarship to university (There Came Both Mist and Snow). He first appeared as a youthful Detective Inspector from Scotland Yard in Death at the President's Lodging (Seven Suspects in the United States) in 1936. He retired from Scotland Yard at a very early age just after World War II, on marrying Judith Raven, a sculptor first encountered in Appleby's End. He had two younger sisters, Patricia (Stop Press) and Jane (Operation Pax), both of whom figure prominently in one novel each and then are never mentioned again.

He then reappeared as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, a position rewarded by a knighthood. Although he later retired to Long Dream Manor, his wife's family home in the countryside, he continued to solve crimes well into the 1980s, his last appearance being in Appleby and the Ospreys in 1986, 50 years after his fictional debut. For a couple of the later tales his son Bobby serves as the chief protagonist.

In 2010, eighteen previously uncollected short stories appeared in Appleby Talks About Crime.

Appleby is mentioned in the Edmund Crispin novel Holy Disorders.

Appleby stories

Novels

Short Story Collections

References