Enjoyable little crime story - written in 1977 and the second of Innes's novels to feature the elderly portrait painter Charles Honeybath, RA. In this one, which could easily have become a script for Midsomer murders or New tricks if Innes/Stewart had been a generation or so younger, Honeybath's old friend and confrère Edwin Lightfoot starts acting more than usually oddly and has to be shipped off to an upmarket sanctuary for elderly, rich eccentrics. Honeybath smells a rat when three previously unknown paintings from Lightfoot's much sought-after early period suddenly appear on the market...

The structure is a bit odd for a crime story: the first body doesn't appear until more than halfway through the book, and the resolution is rather unusual as well, but Innes knows what he's doing and it all seems to work.

Old-fashioned, certainly, and without much bite to it, but elegant and charming enough to be worth laying down for when you need a bit of comfort reading. ( )