Operation Pax

Sir John Appleby #12

by Michael Innes

A two-bit con-man is thrown in at the deep end as a desperate hunt takes place in Oxford, in this gripping tale the thrilling climax of which takes place in the vaults of the Bodleian Library.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, Thriller, 20th Century, Audiobook, Detective

342 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Michael 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.

Reviews

[Abigail Bok · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the writing of “Michael Innes” (in real life J. I. M. Stewart), though not always his taste. In the mystery novels he wrote during World War II, he had a tendency to gin up fantastic scenarios of vast and loopy conspiracies run by criminal masterminds; I find those books too preposterous to enjoy deeply. When he sticks to more routine crime in the British countryside, I am happier.

The Paper Thunderbolt, elsewhere titled Operation Pax, is postwar but a return to the more extravagant style of the wartime stories, so I appreciated it more than I liked it. It opens with an extended section told from more or less within the mind of a petty criminal, a feral creature named Routh who slips by accident into a situation of much greater evil than he had ever envisioned on his own. His mind is a very uncomfortable place to be, and the reader is forced to stay there an awfully long time. The only times Routh is functional are when he is deceiving himself with Napoleonic fantasies; when brought back to a recognition of reality, he descends into mindless, gibbering panic. I felt prurient being let into his thoughts.

Routh winds up trapped on a strange estate filled with wild animals behaving oddly, then is incarcerated in a laboratory. Through a combination of luck and low cunning he escapes, bearing with him a piece of paper he thinks might have some value. Thus begins a chase that lasts for much of the book.

In fits and starts, with many near-captures, he makes it as far as Oxford, where he continues to be pursued and happens across the path of Innes’s recurring hero, Sir John Appleby, now a higher-up at Scotland Yard. Appleby has come to Oxford because the fiancé of his much younger sister has disappeared. Various Oxford dons, Appleby’s sister, and a random but delightful stranger all become entangled in the plot, which continues to be both expansive and freakish.

Although Innes’s style is measured his action is nonstop, and this book is hard to put down. I did get tired of the many coincidences, which added to the sense of the bizarre; and mad-scientist plots to control politics tend to leave me cold. Nevertheless, there’s a hypnotic quality to this book and I love all the Oxford local color.

[Bev · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of The Paper Thunderbolt (aka Operation Pax, 1951) by Michael Innes follows a two-bit con man by the name of Albert Routh as he muffs his most recent confidence game and winds up in the clutches of a secret society bent on world domination through the pacification of the masses. When he flees the bank on his two-stroke motorcycle after losing his nerve, he heads to the countryside and lands in the little village of Milton Porcorum where he meets a mysterious man by the name of Squire. Squire recognizes Routh's type and immediately offers to put him on to "a good thing." Before Routh knows it, he is being held captive in a room at Milton Manor while Squire and his confederates decide what to do with him. But the lock on his room is a piddling little thing and offers no challenge to a man who was dismantling such locks when just a tot. He escapes from the room and manages to overhear Squire's superior insisting that he do away with Routh before he causes too much trouble. The con man finds the nerve that he lost at the bank and tries to bluff his way into the gang--when that goes awry, he manages to kill Squire's counterpart and make off with a bit of paper that the men seem to find mighty important. He hops on his motorbike and makes tracks for Oxford. If he can just find a safe place to stash the paper until he can lose his pursuers, he'll be set to make a fortune....


Cut scene to Oxford where Sir John Appleby has arrived to help his younger sister Jane (an undergraduate at the university) track down her missing fiancé, Geoffrey Ourglass. Ourglass is a brilliant young scientist and he was last seen in a car headed towards Milton Porcorum home of Milton Manor as well as health clinic which serves as a front for the evil doers. Before Sir John and Jane can meet up, she spies Routh lurking in the Bodleian Library and he's obviously scared and trying to avoid another man hot on his heels. She notices him hiding a bit of paper, but is so caught up in the cat and mouse game playing before her eyes that she doesn't give it much thought. Later, she sees the injured Routh being loaded into an ambulance and realizes that his pursuers are whisking him away to....of all places Milton Porcorum. Jane is an impetuous young woman and hails a taxi to follow the ambulance and hopefully get a lead on Geoffrey. Fortunately for her, the taxi driver doesn't mind being a party to a bit of intrigue and, in fact, turns out to be quite adept in such situations....

Meanwhile, Sir John makes inquiries around Oxford--talking to dons and tutors who knew Geoffrey and he begins to see ties to another matter which the Yard has been investigating. You see, Geoffrey isn't the first young man to go missing. Several men--rogues and down-and-outers--who would normally not be missed (save for the Yard's watchful eye) have disappeared over the last several months and inquiring minds have begun to wonder if the disappearances are connected. And does Geoffrey's disappearing act mean that the villainous group is getting more bold? Sir John has his own ideas about that. There will be a high-speed chase across the countryside, midnight adventures in the lower regions of the Bodleian Library, and a highly improbable rescue by a horde of youngsters on bikes who call themselves Tigers. Thrilling escapades and exciting episodes dominate this adventure making it more of a caper story than a traditional mystery. I did get fooled at the end--I thought for sure that X would prove to be the mastermind, but I was wrong. I should have stuck with my first thought.

On the whole this turned out to be a very interesting and exciting read. I had my doubts at first. Routh as a narrator didn't work that well for me. Not because he's a con man--but because his voice and his thoughts are very disjointed and stream-of consciousness-like. It was difficult at times to follow what he was saying/thinking and he seemed periodically to have different personalities going for him. Once he got to Oxford and the Applebys came on the scene, the book settled down and became a very nice chase thriller. ★★★ and 3/4--I'm taking off that 1/4 for the disjointed opening chapters.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting. Thanks.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small-time conman stumbles into large-scale criminal activity at Milton Manor, and manages to steal a valuable formula before he disappears. At the same time, Sir John Appleby comes down to Oxford when his undergraduate sister Jane's fiance disappears after being seen at Milton Porcorum. Naturally Sir John stays with his former tutor, now provost at one of the colleges, where a young art historian holds another piece of the puzzle. Meanwhile, the conman encounters some North Oxford schoolboys, and after a coincidental phone call, they gather their friends and head out to Milton. Since most of the action is set in and around Oxford, there's a lot of humor, yes, but also suspense as Jane and a helpful taxi-driver (formerly an undergraduate) break into Milton Manor and later into the Bodleian Library by night, for a smashing, startling conclusion.

[David Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this up in a second hand bookshop. I'd never heard of the author before but he's written a lot of books. This is a superior thriller set in and around Oxford Uiversity shortly after WW2. It starts as a petty thief flunks a bank robbery, then gets beaten up, kidnapped and taken to a sinister house in the country where it looks like he'll come to a sticky end. He proves resourceful however, as do the other two main protagonists who are an Oxford student, Jane (the sister of Appleby, the story's detective, for whom this is one of a series of adventures written by Innes) and her action-hero taxi driver, Remnant, who revisit the house in search of Jane's missing boyfriend, also thought to be held there. The tale climaxes in and under the Bodlean library.
This is really excellent; think P.D. James (Appelby as Dalgleish) and Dorothy L. Sayers (Oxford description in Gaudy Night) and possibly Alistair Mclean (action and humour as in Caravan to Vaccares).
I shall be scouring the second hand bookshops for more of these.

[Candy Wood]

Both US and UK titles, The Paper Thunderbolt and Operation Pax fit nicely, but readers won’t know why until almost the end. In the first two of six parts, the focalizer is a petty crook who gets involved in a much more dangerous operation than usual for him. Appleby, now an Assistant Commissioner, first appears at the end of the third part, as a guest at an Oxford dinner, but then his younger sister Jane, an undergraduate at Somerville, plays a more active role in solving the mystery. This still being only 1951, she is protected by an amazingly competent former undergraduate named Roger Remnant (there are also Oxford dons named Bultitude and Ourglass). A gang of small boys who seem to have come straight out of Just William get involved as well, and the main center of nefarious doings is near a village called Milton Porcorum. With a climactic scene in the Bodleian Library, what’s not to like?

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

An Adventure in Oxford - crazy, strange, - Appleby comes from London to look for his little sister's missing fiance - people have been disappearing quietly - it starts with a con man stumbling into it by accident and ends in subterranean labyrinth - wild

[Margreet Heer · Rating 2 out of 5]

*** THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS ***

I was not impressed by this book. I felt it ignored a few basic rules of storytelling, making it a bumpy ride of a read, only saved by the great Oxford views along the way.

Here are my qualms:

- The first part of the book is all told from the prespective of a rather unlikeable character. That in itself is not bad, it can be an intriguing take that promises interesting character developments. And yes, I did start to feel for the poor hunted Routh, and wished a happy end for him. Which he did not get. In fact, his end was rather off-handed and trivial. I did not like that. You don’t kill off a person so nonchalantly after making your reader first invest in him so much.

- Which takes me to another qualm: I think the tone of the book is rather elitist. At a certain point it is even explained that there are people who just have less value in the world than others. This is presented as the (presumed!) thought process of the bad guys, but it also seems an asumption throughout the book, embodied in the person and fate of Routh.

- Most of the book is a mad hunt, with little plot development. Information on what is going on in Milton Manor only comes very gradually, and mostly in the form of assumptions which all magically turn out to be right.

- There is no insight in the “bad guys”. They mostly remain a faceless mob. I like the obligatory “villain’s monologue” in which he explains his motivations, but it is lacking in this book.

- The person of Roger Remnant bothers me. He suddenly appears, almost unquestioningly throws himself into the adventure and turns out to be smarter and wilier than anyone else. Very unbelievable. Was he thrown in because the writer felt the heroin could not possibly accomplish this by herself…? Remnant is the knight in shining armor that makes Jane the caricature of a woman who needs to be helped, mentored and rescued. When he appeared, I was convinced he was Gregory or even Appleby in disguise, which would have been clever, but nothing like that transpired.

- What was the army of children for? I felt their plan promised an interesting outcome, but once they got at Milton Manor, it was all a big anti-climax.

- This is a John Appleby adventure, but he only made a brief appearance and then turned up in the end as the cavalerie.

All in all, I found it unbalanced and disappointing. The plot holds enough to make it into a riveting crime novel, but it feels like it was written by an amateur with a schwed world view, no sense of logic or believability, and no true understanding of how to treat his characters.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed Operation Pax much more than I expected I would when I began reading it. Almost the first third of the book is about a petty thief, Alfred Routh, an unpleasant little man, who for much of the time is confused and bewildered by his own thoughts and fears, which plunge him into utter panic. As his fears spiral into a engulfing and terrifying fantasy, he finds himself in the little village of Milton Porcorum and here is where his nightmare really begins. A tall man with square shoulders ushers him within the walls of Milton Manor, a most bizarre place where Routh fears for his life. A place where experiments are carried out in a sequence of laboratories and dangerous animals are kept in enclosures surrounding the house. A place with a mysterious and unnamed ‘Director’ who masterminds the whole operation.

After that rather surreal opening the action moves to Oxford and a rather more normal atmosphere – but strange and disturbing things are happening there too. An undergraduate, Geoffrey Ourglass, has disappeared and both his uncle, a university don and his fiancée, Jane, Sir John Appleby’s younger sister are concerned for his safety. Jane enlists her brother’s help to find Geoffrey – and so begins an adventure involving the dons of St Bede’s college, a group of boisterous children on bikes, European refugees as well as Appleby, Jane and her taxi-driver, Roger Remnant. It takes us from St Bede’s college into the depths of the Bodleian Library, on the trail of clues, around Oxford and out into the surrounding countryside in a thrilling chase against time to rescue Geoffrey. There are strange phone calls and most mysterious of all a formula written on a scrap of paper that threatens the safety of the whole world – it must be found and destroyed.

I loved a number of things about this book – the descriptions of the dons and their ‘erudite’ conversations, the setting in Oxford and particularly in the Bodleian library is brilliant, and the children are lively, argumentative and entertaining, providing comic relief. It is pure escapism with an incredibly unbelievable plot and strange eccentric characters that wormed their way into my mind and made it a book I just had to finish. Once it got going it is fast- paced and it kept me guessing about the identity of the mastermind behind the threat to mankind – I was completely wrong!

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 12th entry in the Inspector Appleby series was more of a suspense thriller than a traditional mystery -- something I am beginning to expect with Innes. Appleby himself plays a minor role with more of the action being done by his youngest (and closest) sister Jane, an Oxford student whose fiancé is missing. However, even this situation is secondary to the sinister criminal conspiracy discovered by the petty con-man Routh. The two become entangled when Jane happens to accidentally knock Routh down with her bicycle...

I thought I had spotted the "Director" of the evil conspiracy early on and so the climax in the last chapter (when I discovered I was wrong) was a big surprise! I like that & Jane was a great protagonist. I hope she shows up again.

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fantastical plot involving a secret organisation, mysterious laboratories, and a powerful substance created by ruthless scientists, leavened with a kind of whimsicality that produces names like Ourglass and Bultitude. Not exactly my cup of tea, but it has its pleasures.

[Scilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fun to read and very imaginative. Although the plot seemed to be based on unlikely occurrences, it took many twists and turns. In summary, Jane Appleby's fiance, Geoffrey Ourglass, has disappeared from Oxford, and someone saw him in a car in the small village of Milton Porcorum. The story begins with Routh, a very unsophisticated criminal, who is trying to deposit a check he received under false circumstances runs out of the bank. He doesn't appear to have a lot of courage or brilliance, but he later manages to outwit the more practiced criminals in a secret organization with lots of real estate in the country later in the book when he escapes multiple times and steals one of their important papers. Sir John Appleby, of Scotland Yard, arrives in Oxford to help out his younger sister. Jane is working in the Bodleian Library, when she sees a young man (Routh) apparently being staulked, and watches him put a piece of paper into one of the books which was being used by an elderly scholar. She follows Routh out of the building and sees him taken away in a car. She flags a nearby taxi and asks him to follow. The cab driver tuns out to be strong, smart, and ready to take on the culprits who have kept Jane's fiance captive. A lot of exciting events happen, with the ending taking place in the bowels of the Bodleian Library in the middle of the night where a surprising event occurs.

[M Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, that was a queer read!

I had no idea what to expect when I started. That meant that I spent the first part of the book wondering why I was bothering. The main character was an unpleasant fellow which made it incredibly difficult to care about the situations he found himself in.

Thankfully I persisted and it turned into quite a farcical, but pleasant tale.
I'd happily read another novel by the author. But only forewarned about the style of book I was going to read.

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly, I don't know why I keep trying it with these Innes books; I find them deeply unsatisfying in both style and content. They read like the cleverest boy showing off in class and you just want to knock him one in the eye. Man, if you don't want to write mysteries, then don't. Shoot. Anyway, a hard pass and probably the last time for me with Inspector Appleby.

I received an ecopy from the publishers and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Lila · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Sir John Appleby mystery. As typical for 1950s mysteries, some nefarious scientific research is going on. The opening is slow as we follow Routh, a small time con artist, get into trouble at a strange manor. Things get more interesting when the action (finally) moves into Oxford University strangeness. The Bodleian Library is featured as are the climbing habits of Oxford's students.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Golden Age Mysteries classics for the mysteries; the closed societies with their hidden foibles and agendas, the multiple motives and simmering emotions, and the elegant solutions. And several Innes books I've read in the past have satisfied this. However, Operation Pax did not. First, it's not really a murder mystery. Yes there is a mystery, but it's more of the thriller kind. There is a classic misdirection and twist that comes at the end of the book, but it's not really that much of a surprise, at least to me. I also found the opening third of the book rather tough going. The character of the mid-level conman was not very sympathetic and I never really warmed up to him as a character (thought I don't think one is supposed to like him), but what I really missed was the with and erudition of Innes. Once the focus shifted to Oxford, that kicked in and I began enjoying the book, with its puns and subtle satire. The book also suffered from way too many coincidences - the bad guys were always way too lucky and our protagonists always just happened to be in the right place at the right time or were related to someone else important in the plot.
The book, s second half improves and it's conclusion is thrilling although there is lots of stuff left hanging with not everything tied up nicely. This book is much more Hitchcock than Christie and while I like both, I was disappointed because I was expecting the latter.

I received a free review copy via Crime Classics. This did not influence my review.

[Redqueen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Con-men, scientists, Oxford dons & students and a gang of small children. Innes is always a delight & the Appleby books are my favorites. Golden Age mystery with enough twists to keep them from being too dated. Not quite a cozy, but close - and worth the time.

[Jeanmarie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is probably a pretty good book, but the power dynamic and casual treatment of rape are too terrifying even for me to tolerate. I had to put it down and am too scared for my own mental health to pick it back up.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recent Reads: Operation Pax. Michael Innes' Appleby doesn't arrive until halfway through this Oxford-centric thriller. A secret group of scientists plot world domination, but a conman and a refugee academic accidentally stand in their way. A technothriller from 1951 in disguise?

[Pat Welte · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable read, somewhat different story. The characters were believable and sometimes funny. There where twists and turns and suspense.

[R Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very entertaining!

Very entertaining with some unexpected twists and turns. Don't be put off by the opening chapters; it just gets better and better.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writing is addictive. Sometimes I think I read his books more for the writing than the mystery.

[Amanda]

Got halfway through and gave up. Just a mess,and boring to boot. Giving up on this author.

[Tanya R · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a bit of a slow start, this book reminds me of a cozy mystery but with lots of action. If you are a fan of mysteries and enjoy a lot of chase scenes, definitely pick this one up.

[Margaret Fast · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[DGT · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like many academics who turn to fiction, Michael Innes (J. I. M. Stewart) exploits academic stereotypes for satire but, in the end (the every end of “Operation Pax”), defends university institutions, here, the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

The structure for the first half is intriguing because we start off with the situation of a petty con-man; then meet an exiled German; then a pair of Oxford academics, eccentric and off-putting (as all “dons” seem to be); and finally Jane Appleby, an undergraduate and the sister of Sir John Appleby, Deputy-Commissioner at Scotland Yard. Their stories gradually intersect and draw us to the criminal activities behind the walls and electric fences of Milton Manor. The villainous – it soon becomes dastardly - conspiracy to render docile whole populations of the post-1945 world through the operation of a secret bio-chemical formula is located (in much the same manner as in the television series, “The Avengers”) in an English village, Milton Porcorum – this seems to be the rationale for the chapter epigraphs from John Milton. It is also in the first half of the novel that there are revealing insights into the society of conspiracies, prejudices, and other legacies of the War and it is surprising that Innes doesn’t make much of an effort to make use of this context of winning the war and yet the continuing resentments. But what most damages the novel is that our interest in seeing how Innes has characters meet on or getting off buses or in the suburbs of north Oxford gets dissipated by the way he brings the plot together: it is Boys’ Own stuff, including some truly awful formulaic characters (a crowd of inventive and brave schoolboys, country types, plucky Jane, Appleby, himself, when he dives into a muddy lake rather than walk round it, and, most annoying of all, Roger Remnant (??), Reliance (??) – I have already forgotten his surname. Of course, it could all be satire of the mystery but, if so, it is very weak or a great deal has been lost since publication in 1951.

In spite of the irritations of “Operation Pax”, which almost caused me to give it up, Michael Innes is well thought of and the writing is generally lucid. I might, therefore, try Innes’ first Inspector Appleby mysteries, ”Death at the President's Lodging” and “Hamlet, Revenge!”, to see if they are less silly and predictable, and to appreciate novels in which Inspector Appleby is more central.

[Hugh Dunnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is an unusual take on the thriller formula to have for your main protagonist a small, self-centred, greedy, conniving, unpleasant individual. But that is who we have to root for at the start of this book, and the fact that we do without ever thinking any better of him is indeed quite a feat.
And in fact the first third of this not insubstantial book is almost entirely taken up with this individual’s story, a story that is certainly far-fetched but still translates into quite an exciting, fun adventure. However, it is round about this point that our much expected hero Sir John Appleby takes centre stage but even then only fleetingly as the real hero of the piece and central character is Jane Appleby, much younger sister of Sir John. This is the point when the story settles into a (slightly) less frenetic and slightly more believable standard ‘mystery’ novel setting which to be honest I was quite glad of: a proper 1950s crime novel but still with plenty of adventure. That is what I was reading this for!

This is the second Appleby novel I have read (this one supplied by the Crime Classics Advance Readers Club) and I enjoyed it very much, a little bit more than the first one which I found a little too irritatingly flippant and smart in its treatment of the story. On this occasion, the settings in the novel are wonderfully realized and very much of a time past, and I’m a sucker for period fiction particularly when actually written in the period!

After I finished my first Innes book I considered that it may be my last. But following this, I am now actually looking forward to the other two Innes books I have lined up to read. So, go with the story, don’t get bogged down in the at times less than completely believable plot and settle in for a genuinely thrilling, funny, and certainly very enjoyable story.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Goodness! This was certainly action-packed!
A small time con man, and burglar, Alfred Routh, after having a scare at a bank, finds himself in the countryside in the Oxford area, due to trouble with his mo-ped. This brings him to an estate called Milton Manor. A man from the estate sums him up as a down and out, and invites him in. It seems the estate keeps wild animals, and so the security of the place is extremely high. Routh is left locked in a room while the man goes off but Routh is able to pick the lock and escapes. He bluffs his way to find the administrator, and finds out that he is to be killed. Things then go wrong for the administrator and Routh manages to escape, only to be hounded by the security of the Manor. As Routh had managed to pickup a scientific formula on his way out.
Appleby turns up in Oxford, as his sister's fiance has gone missing, last seen in a car in Milton Manor's vicinity. Appleby's sister hires a car and soon is friendly with the driver of the car, a Roger Remnant, who takes it on himself to investigate the Manor.

I really did enjoy this book. First of this author I have given a 4 stars for.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

By rating this 5 stars, I'm not saying that the writing of this is on a par with, say, Austen, a Bronte sister, etc. However, I was expecting to hate this, and I was sucked in after the first page. The book then proceeded to feel as though I was running the entire time, which is amazingly difficult to do without Dan Brown-level cheesy literary devices. It also changes point of view a number of times, which could have been extremely confusing and was not. The MacGuffin is also nicely revealed as all good MacGuffins should be.

Extra points for getting the Oxford geography spot-on. Even with the addition of fictitious colleges, it felt correct (as it should, considering the author was an Oxford don).

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, the plot of "Pax" sounds like the plot of "The Paper Thunderbolt." Book titles sometimes change from UK publisher to USA publisher. Michael Innes is an old favorite of mine, so we shall see how this book progresses.

[Clive Willcocks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great story from Michael Inches. it took me a while to get into (hence the 4 stars) but still a great story. Highly recommended. Can't wait for next months book.