Hamlet Revenge

I wrote a few months ago about a Michael Innes novel, The Weight of the Evidence and through this found another Innes fan whose blog, Books Do Furnish a Room, has become one of my favourites. I managed to get hold of this one recently, thought to be one of Innes' best, and have just finished reading it. It certainly is a breathtakingly brilliant novel. It was written in 1937, and so in many senses a historical document -- the coming outbreak of war lurks in the background and informs one of the interwoven themes, and the setting, a stately home in the heart of the English countryside, provides all the nostalgia anyone who loves this kind of thing could wish for. But of course being Innes, all this is viewed with a wry and ironic eye, and an awareness that this world is a most peculiar one which will certainly not endure forever.
As the novel begins, a very unusual performance of Hamlet  is being rehearsed at Scamnum House, seat of the Duke and Duchess of Horton. Scamnum is a very grand house indeed -- Blenheim Palace, two counties away, is described as its 'sort of little brother'. Playing in Hamlet will be the inhabitants of the house -- the Duke is Claudius, the Duchess Gertrude, their beautiful daughter Elizabeth Ophelia. The rest of the cast is made up of relatives and family friends, some of them very distinguished: the Lord Chancellor, Lord Auldern, is to play Polonius, and Hamlet himself is to be the most famous actor of the day, Melville Clay. The play is being directed by an Oxford academic, Giles Gott, one-time tutor to the Duke's son and heir. Gott (obviously an alter-ego for Innes himself) not only teaches English at Oxford but also writes brilliant, complex detective novels in his spare time. All is going remarkably well, apart from some very disturbing messages that are being received by various members of the cast -- "Hamlet, Revenge!" is one of them, and others are along the same lines. Then, in the middle of the performance, a murder takes place under the most extraordinary circumstances:  Lord Auldern is shot dead while actually on the stage, though behind a curtain. All the cast and backstage helpers, numbering about thirty, are potential suspects. Given the identity of the victim and the important political situation he has been currently managing, it is vital to have the best brain in the country to solve the case. That brain is, of course, the young detective John Appleby, who is sent to Scamnum immediately to solve what almost proves to be his Waterloo. Appleby and Gott, longtime friends, produce many possible solutions to the case but each proves to be a red-herring. The actual denouement is most exciting and, to me, quite unexpected.
They don't make 'em like this any more, I'm tempted to say. Innes' novels are pretty intellectually demanding, I think, and I certainly could not identify all the literary quotations and allusions that this one is studded with. But that does not matter, actually, as there is such exuberance and wit at work here that it is a real pleasure to be swept along by it.