Innes, Michael

Innes, Michael, pseud. of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, 1906–94, British writer and scholar, b. near Edinburgh. From 1969 to 1973 he was a reader in English literature at Oxford. Under his own name he wrote novels, short stories, and such critical studies as Character and Motive in Shakespeare (1949), Rudyard Kipling (1966), and Thomas Hardy (1971). As "Michael Innes" he wrote more than forty detective stories featuring John Appleby, a gentleman turned policeman. These erudite and witty mysteries include Seven Suspects (1936), A Comedy of Terrors (1940), The Open House (1972), and The Appleby File (1975).