What do you think?
Rate this book
From London Far: The Unsuspected Chasm
As Meredith, an academic, stands in a Bloomsbury tobacconist waiting for his two ounces of tobacco, he murmurs a verse of 'London, a Poem' and is astounded when a trap door opens into the London Catacombs, bringing him face to face with the Horton Venus, by Titian. From then on he is trapped in a maze of the illicit art trade, in the company of the redoubtable Jane Halliwell.
Paperback
First published January 1, 1946
3 people are currently reading
74 people want to read
About the author
Michael Innes
130 books91 followersMichael Innes was the pseudonym of John Innes MacKintosh (J.I.M.) Stewart (J.I.M. Stewart).
He was born in Edinburgh, and educated at Edinburgh Academy and Oriel College, Oxford. He was Lecturer in English at the University of Leeds from 1930 - 1935, and spent the succeeding ten years as Jury Professor of English at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
He returned to the United Kingdom in 1949, to become a Lecturer at the Queen's University of Belfast. In 1949 he became a Student (Fellow) of Christ Church, Oxford, becoming a Professor by the time of his retirement in 1973.
As J.I.M. Stewart he published a number of works of non-fiction, mainly critical studies of authors, including Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling, as well as about twenty works of fiction and a memoir, 'Myself and Michael Innes'.
As Michael Innes, he published numerous mystery novels and short story collections, most featuring the Scotland Yard detective John Appleby.
He was born in Edinburgh, and educated at Edinburgh Academy and Oriel College, Oxford. He was Lecturer in English at the University of Leeds from 1930 - 1935, and spent the succeeding ten years as Jury Professor of English at the University of Adelaide, South Australia.
He returned to the United Kingdom in 1949, to become a Lecturer at the Queen's University of Belfast. In 1949 he became a Student (Fellow) of Christ Church, Oxford, becoming a Professor by the time of his retirement in 1973.
As J.I.M. Stewart he published a number of works of non-fiction, mainly critical studies of authors, including Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling, as well as about twenty works of fiction and a memoir, 'Myself and Michael Innes'.
As Michael Innes, he published numerous mystery novels and short story collections, most featuring the Scotland Yard detective John Appleby.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
August 30, 2017
Erudite and bizarre mystery about art theft. Richard Meredith, a middle-aged scholar of Juvenal and literary criticism, is catapulted into this adventure by mischance - don't worry if the first chapter puts you off as the story really starts with the second one; the first one makes more sense later on.
Although Inspector Appleby isn't in this book, it did remind me of a few of his adventures.
Although Inspector Appleby isn't in this book, it did remind me of a few of his adventures.
Read
October 9, 2025Wild and strange. Characters are so thin as to be transparent. At some point in his career I think Innes must've just thought to himself, Hey, I don't have to know where a book is gonna end when I start to write it; I'll just write it and chuck a bunch of zany stuff in there and see where it takes me. So the book does not impress itself upon the reader as a unified thing, but on any given page something interesting might happen, from a surreal coincidence right down to a mental-Olympics-worthy turn of phrase. A very peculiar pleasure.
October 5, 2016
One of a half-dozen or so Michael Innes crime whimsies not involving Insp Appleby. This book is an adventure story regarding stolen art which was first published in 1946. It is a lighthearted and erudite read and the plot is preposterous and the villains bizarre but Innes writes as always with wit and humour and actually a lot to make one think about the appreciation of art, the art establishment, and the psychology behind collecting art. Just brilliant.
April 15, 2025
Another adventurous romp from Michael Innes. More of a straightforward adventure than The Journeying Boy, the adventure takes Meredith, a mild mannered academic and expert on
Juvenal and Martial, with his unexpected companion, Jean, also an academic, from subterranean London, hunted by slavering bloodhounds, to an isolated and crumbling Scottish castle, to a vast, fantastic and surreal home of a multi-millionaire art collector in mid-west. They travel by submarine and Zeppelin and find themselves running a good deal.
The villains are suitably defeated, the priceless art is (mostly) saved, and they are flown home in the Zeppelin with the possibility of more adventures, for Jean at least.
Juvenal and Martial, with his unexpected companion, Jean, also an academic, from subterranean London, hunted by slavering bloodhounds, to an isolated and crumbling Scottish castle, to a vast, fantastic and surreal home of a multi-millionaire art collector in mid-west. They travel by submarine and Zeppelin and find themselves running a good deal.
The villains are suitably defeated, the priceless art is (mostly) saved, and they are flown home in the Zeppelin with the possibility of more adventures, for Jean at least.
February 26, 2019
“A few hours ago I had nothing more momentous in front of me than a quiet journey to a great house in Yorkshire. Now you are beckoning me heaven knows where—say out of Anthony Trollope into John Buchan.”
So says Professor Meredith, the protagonist of "From London Far." He's talking to Jean, a lovely, intelligent former student, with whom he is at the front end of a rollicking adventure.
While in a tobacco shop, Meredith absent-mindedly murmurs a reference to a line of poetry, which is misunderstood and which tumbles him, literally, into being mistaken for the head of an international art-theft ring.
As the quote indicates, it's a spoof of the adventure novels of Buchan and his ilk (which were more popular in 1946, when the book was written). The narrative is just a series of wild rides for Meredith and Jean. I mean "wild rides" literally: down chutes, across roofs, in the back of moving vans, into ruined island castles, caves, submarines, airplanes, a crazy American tycoon's elaborate estate), and preposterous situations.
Innes novels are usually discursive and erudite; he was an Oxford don, so he tends to cram his books with literary jokes and allusions. There are SO MANY here. Meredith frequently drifts off into professorial fogs, usually at inappropriate moments. (Thank heavens for the intrepid Jane, as well as for a lot of lucky breaks.) Sprinkled throughout, too, are interesting thoughts about the postwar poverty of Europe, the ascendance of American culture and money, and the psychology (literally) of art collectors.
Innes' plots are often improbable to the point of silliness...but this one takes the cake. It's a lot of fun, and funny. But half the time I had no idea what was going on, especially because he performs the literary equivalent of smash-cuts: Meredith and Jean will be in the middle of a seemingly inescapable, life-threatening situation, and then the scene shifts abruptly to them later, safely en route to another adventure, among new characters, with only the most cursory, nonsensical explanation of how they got there. I guess that's the parodic element? To be sure, it keeps the book from being too long. There's also no character development to speak of: Jane is kind of a cipher, but wonderful in a crisis. I THINK there's a romance there, but I'm not even certain.
I've noticed that Innes sometimes puts little self-aware asides, little meta-messages in his books. I think the quote I mentioned earlier is one, and I think this is another:
“…I’m afraid I’m making this story frightfully long.” “You are making it distinctly intriguing,” Meredith chuckled at what he conceived to be his very modish use of this word. “I would beg you not to retrench in any way what may appear to you to be the superfluities of your expression.”
Such a weird book, even for Michael Innes! Kind of an exhausting shaggy-dog story. But enjoyable.
So says Professor Meredith, the protagonist of "From London Far." He's talking to Jean, a lovely, intelligent former student, with whom he is at the front end of a rollicking adventure.
While in a tobacco shop, Meredith absent-mindedly murmurs a reference to a line of poetry, which is misunderstood and which tumbles him, literally, into being mistaken for the head of an international art-theft ring.
As the quote indicates, it's a spoof of the adventure novels of Buchan and his ilk (which were more popular in 1946, when the book was written). The narrative is just a series of wild rides for Meredith and Jean. I mean "wild rides" literally: down chutes, across roofs, in the back of moving vans, into ruined island castles, caves, submarines, airplanes, a crazy American tycoon's elaborate estate), and preposterous situations.
Innes novels are usually discursive and erudite; he was an Oxford don, so he tends to cram his books with literary jokes and allusions. There are SO MANY here. Meredith frequently drifts off into professorial fogs, usually at inappropriate moments. (Thank heavens for the intrepid Jane, as well as for a lot of lucky breaks.) Sprinkled throughout, too, are interesting thoughts about the postwar poverty of Europe, the ascendance of American culture and money, and the psychology (literally) of art collectors.
Innes' plots are often improbable to the point of silliness...but this one takes the cake. It's a lot of fun, and funny. But half the time I had no idea what was going on, especially because he performs the literary equivalent of smash-cuts: Meredith and Jean will be in the middle of a seemingly inescapable, life-threatening situation, and then the scene shifts abruptly to them later, safely en route to another adventure, among new characters, with only the most cursory, nonsensical explanation of how they got there. I guess that's the parodic element? To be sure, it keeps the book from being too long. There's also no character development to speak of: Jane is kind of a cipher, but wonderful in a crisis. I THINK there's a romance there, but I'm not even certain.
I've noticed that Innes sometimes puts little self-aware asides, little meta-messages in his books. I think the quote I mentioned earlier is one, and I think this is another:
“…I’m afraid I’m making this story frightfully long.” “You are making it distinctly intriguing,” Meredith chuckled at what he conceived to be his very modish use of this word. “I would beg you not to retrench in any way what may appear to you to be the superfluities of your expression.”
Such a weird book, even for Michael Innes! Kind of an exhausting shaggy-dog story. But enjoyable.
June 22, 2014
Unrepentantly silly. Great fun.
December 1, 2024
Unexpectedly, a great reading experience. Entertaining, erudite buchan-esque adventure rendered in eloquent and elaborate, almost pynchonian English.
Read
February 1, 2021I must have read this when I first bought it many years ago, but nothing seemed familiar. First published in 1946, the book combines awareness of the sufferings of the war recently ended with the escapism of a thriller. Fifty-year-old Classics scholar Richard Meredith (this isn’t part of the Appleby series) thinks out loud about a London poem in a Bloomsbury tobacconist’s and is hurtled into a world of international dealings in looted art objects. Most of the characters are cartoonish, especially the Americans, whether crooks or rescuers, and also the elderly, eccentric Scottish sisters living in a mostly-ruined castle. German and Italian national stereotypes participate too, and Jean Halliwell provides a plucky young female companion in the adventure. Meredith comments to her, after he has quibbled about her choice of underworld slang, “but this is typical of the futility of the scholar’s calling today. We take refuge from unpleasant present facts in the mere fripperies of philology.” Exactly, and isn’t it fun.
February 28, 2013
Originally published on my blog here in January 2007.
For forty years or so, the serious (but now more or less forgotten) novelist and academic J.I.M. Stewart produced popular thrillers under the pseudonym of Michael Innes. Most of these are crime novels featuring upper class policeman John Appleby; this one is not one of them. It tells of the accidential discovery of a missive art smuggling operation taking advantage of the devastation of Europe during the Second World War. Richard Meredith, an academic, is thinking about poetry while selecting a purchase in a London tobacconist, and absently murmurs "London, a poem": words taken by the shopkeeper to be the smugglers' password; the shop itself covers the entrance to an underground warehouse storing an incredible collection of art. There, Meredith, instead of going to the police, pretends to be a gang member, kills a man, escapes with a kidnapped young woman, and follows the trail to a bizarre Scottish castle with associated guano mining operation.
From London Far is, like most of those Stewart published as Michael Innes, a whimsical novel - in this case too much so for its own good. The plot is full of absurdities, and is obviously intended to be a parody of those early twentieth century adventure stories where an ordinary person (who just happens to be resourceful enough to be a hero) discovers a plot through a contrived coincidence. Most of these books can be seen as imitators of John Buchan, whose Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps is perhaps the best known example of such a hero. The satire starts from Meredith being a scholar of classical literature rather than fullback of the Scottish Rugby team or a South African diamond prospector visiting England. There is obviously a place for such a parody, but the novel goes on to be filled with many more absurdities which are irritating rather than humorous. In Scotland, for example, Meredith is able to play an almost identical trick on the group of smugglers there to the impersonation he carried out in London, something that seems most unlikely after the invention of the telephone. Too much of what is going on is obscured from the reader for too much of the novel, making much of the action seem unmotivated, and the allusive nature of Innes' style makes From London Far a big effort to read: not a good trait for a thriller.
There are detective stories with whimsical humour and academic detectives which work well. The Gervase Fen stories of Edmund Crispin, contemporary with Innes, are excellent, for example, and Innes' Appleby novels are generally better as long as he doesn't let himself get carried away. (Operation Pax is good, and the level of the whimsical in that novel is about that of the average episode of the Avengers, which should give some idea of just how fantastical From London Far actually gets.) I suspect that J.I.M. Stewart would be surprised that his pseudonymous works have lasted longer than the novels he publised under his own name (our local library stocks about a dozen of the one, and none of the other, suggesting that this is the case), and in this instance I would agree that From London Far is too out of date to be far from oblivion.
For forty years or so, the serious (but now more or less forgotten) novelist and academic J.I.M. Stewart produced popular thrillers under the pseudonym of Michael Innes. Most of these are crime novels featuring upper class policeman John Appleby; this one is not one of them. It tells of the accidential discovery of a missive art smuggling operation taking advantage of the devastation of Europe during the Second World War. Richard Meredith, an academic, is thinking about poetry while selecting a purchase in a London tobacconist, and absently murmurs "London, a poem": words taken by the shopkeeper to be the smugglers' password; the shop itself covers the entrance to an underground warehouse storing an incredible collection of art. There, Meredith, instead of going to the police, pretends to be a gang member, kills a man, escapes with a kidnapped young woman, and follows the trail to a bizarre Scottish castle with associated guano mining operation.
From London Far is, like most of those Stewart published as Michael Innes, a whimsical novel - in this case too much so for its own good. The plot is full of absurdities, and is obviously intended to be a parody of those early twentieth century adventure stories where an ordinary person (who just happens to be resourceful enough to be a hero) discovers a plot through a contrived coincidence. Most of these books can be seen as imitators of John Buchan, whose Richard Hannay in The 39 Steps is perhaps the best known example of such a hero. The satire starts from Meredith being a scholar of classical literature rather than fullback of the Scottish Rugby team or a South African diamond prospector visiting England. There is obviously a place for such a parody, but the novel goes on to be filled with many more absurdities which are irritating rather than humorous. In Scotland, for example, Meredith is able to play an almost identical trick on the group of smugglers there to the impersonation he carried out in London, something that seems most unlikely after the invention of the telephone. Too much of what is going on is obscured from the reader for too much of the novel, making much of the action seem unmotivated, and the allusive nature of Innes' style makes From London Far a big effort to read: not a good trait for a thriller.
There are detective stories with whimsical humour and academic detectives which work well. The Gervase Fen stories of Edmund Crispin, contemporary with Innes, are excellent, for example, and Innes' Appleby novels are generally better as long as he doesn't let himself get carried away. (Operation Pax is good, and the level of the whimsical in that novel is about that of the average episode of the Avengers, which should give some idea of just how fantastical From London Far actually gets.) I suspect that J.I.M. Stewart would be surprised that his pseudonymous works have lasted longer than the novels he publised under his own name (our local library stocks about a dozen of the one, and none of the other, suggesting that this is the case), and in this instance I would agree that From London Far is too out of date to be far from oblivion.
March 13, 2015
Michael Innes is the pseudonym of J.I.M Stewart who served as a lecturer at Queens College in Belfast and eventually as a professor at Oxford until retirement in 1973. Under his pseudonym, he wrote nearly 50 crime mysteries between 1936 and 1986. His most famous character is Sir John Appleby, a Scotland Yard Detective Inspector. All my encounters with Innes’ work up until now were works in which Appleby appeared.
From London Far is not one of these. The plot centers around Richard Meredith, an Oxford don comfortable in the study of Martial and Juvenal, who wanders into a tobacconist shop and in a scholarly reverie mutters, “London, a poem”. This sounds close enough to a secret password gaining him admission into an underworld of art thieves, which he quickly realizes as he comes across stolen works of Titian and Giotto. He discovers he is being mistaken for a German conspirator, Vogelsang, and that a woman being held, Jean Halliwell, has also gotten mixed up in this plot. Through quick thinking, he succeeds in pretending to be Vogelsang, kills the real Vogelsang when he turns up, and leads Jean in a hair-raising escape through chutes and across rooftops.
As they compare notes, they decide not to do the sensible thing and go to the police, but to take off to an island off the coast of Scotland to confront the apparent mastermind of these art thefts, Sir Properjohn, who ends up being the front man for the real mastermind, Don Perez. Along the way, they encounter a pair of eccentric sisters living in a rundown castle on the island, learn of the abduction of Higbed, a distinguished psychiatrist, and end up captured only to be abandoned on a sinking sub.
In Bond-like style, they manage to escape, which leads to the third part of this story, their encounter with the eccentric millionaire industrialist, Otis K. Neff and his crazy conveyor-belt mansion. It turns out that he is the buyer of all the stolen works. I will leave the denouement, and the role Higbed plays in all this, for you to discover if you wish.
It all seemed to stretch plausibility a bit, but probably not more than a James Bond novel or movie, and likewise with a bit of tongue-in-cheek. I wondered if this was Innes’ way of poking fun at this genre of books (although this novel antedates Fleming’s first Bond novel by six years). This is also another in the genre of detective fiction that revolves around Oxford settings and characters, including some of the works of Dorothy L. Sayers and Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books and the Lewis spinoff. If you like these kinds of stories, From London Far and other Innes’ works might give you a new vein to explore.
I have to say I am one who does enjoy such stories, but I still found this one a bit far-fetched, though not unenjoyable. I want to return to the Sir John Appleby stories that I have not read (a good number). For literary style, and storytelling Innes is right up there with P.D. James, Sayers, and others of his period, and worth discovering if you have not read his work.
From London Far is not one of these. The plot centers around Richard Meredith, an Oxford don comfortable in the study of Martial and Juvenal, who wanders into a tobacconist shop and in a scholarly reverie mutters, “London, a poem”. This sounds close enough to a secret password gaining him admission into an underworld of art thieves, which he quickly realizes as he comes across stolen works of Titian and Giotto. He discovers he is being mistaken for a German conspirator, Vogelsang, and that a woman being held, Jean Halliwell, has also gotten mixed up in this plot. Through quick thinking, he succeeds in pretending to be Vogelsang, kills the real Vogelsang when he turns up, and leads Jean in a hair-raising escape through chutes and across rooftops.
As they compare notes, they decide not to do the sensible thing and go to the police, but to take off to an island off the coast of Scotland to confront the apparent mastermind of these art thefts, Sir Properjohn, who ends up being the front man for the real mastermind, Don Perez. Along the way, they encounter a pair of eccentric sisters living in a rundown castle on the island, learn of the abduction of Higbed, a distinguished psychiatrist, and end up captured only to be abandoned on a sinking sub.
In Bond-like style, they manage to escape, which leads to the third part of this story, their encounter with the eccentric millionaire industrialist, Otis K. Neff and his crazy conveyor-belt mansion. It turns out that he is the buyer of all the stolen works. I will leave the denouement, and the role Higbed plays in all this, for you to discover if you wish.
It all seemed to stretch plausibility a bit, but probably not more than a James Bond novel or movie, and likewise with a bit of tongue-in-cheek. I wondered if this was Innes’ way of poking fun at this genre of books (although this novel antedates Fleming’s first Bond novel by six years). This is also another in the genre of detective fiction that revolves around Oxford settings and characters, including some of the works of Dorothy L. Sayers and Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse books and the Lewis spinoff. If you like these kinds of stories, From London Far and other Innes’ works might give you a new vein to explore.
I have to say I am one who does enjoy such stories, but I still found this one a bit far-fetched, though not unenjoyable. I want to return to the Sir John Appleby stories that I have not read (a good number). For literary style, and storytelling Innes is right up there with P.D. James, Sayers, and others of his period, and worth discovering if you have not read his work.
August 20, 2015
I enjoyed the author's Appleby series when I first came across it in the late 1970s so I was pleased to see this in a secondhand bookshop. This book does not feature Appleby but is an adventure story regarding stolen art which was first published in 1946. It is a lighthearted read and the plot is preposterous and the villains bizarre but the author writes with wit and humour and I quite enjoyed it.
December 6, 2012
One of the better non-Appleby stories. In three sections, set in an underground warehouse for stolen art treasures, the highlands of Scotland and a Hearst-like mansion in California. Just the right side of far-fetched and deliciously witty although the middle section does drag a little.
January 15, 2013
The shift in settings from London to Scotland to (improbably) America are fascinating in their own right. Still a little muddled on the plot but I think I've got it; reflects the fairly muddled time it was set in (not quite post-WWII).
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews