Sir John Appleby is a fictional detective created by Michael Innes in the 1930s who appeared in many novels and short stories.
Appleby had perhaps the longest career of any of the great detectives. He was born in 1907 or 1908 (in Silence Observed he states that his age is fifty-three). He first appeared as a youthful Detective Inspector from Scotland Yard in Death at the President's Lodging (Seven Suspects in the United States) in 1936. He retired from Scotland Yard at a very early age just after World War II, on marrying Judith Raven, a sculptress first encountered in Appleby's End.
He then reappeared as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, a position rewarded by a knighthood. Although he later retired to Long Dream Manor, his wife's family home in the countryside, he continued to solve crimes well into the 1980s, his last appearance being in Appleby and the Ospreys in 1986, 50 years after his fictional debut.
In 2010, eighteen previously uncollected short stories appeared in Appleby Talks About Crime.
Appleby also makes an appearance in the Edmund Crispin novel Holy Disorders.
Read more about Sir John Appleby: Appleby Stories
Famous quotes containing the words sir john, sir, john and/or appleby:
“The big blue eyes are shut which saw wrong clothing
And favourite fields and coverts from a horse;”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)
“People are too apt to treat God as if he were a minor royalty.”
—Herbert Beerbohm, Sir Tree (1853–1917)
“The person who designed a robot that could act and think as well as your four-year-old would deserve a Nobel Prize. But there is no public recognition for bringing up several truly human beings.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“Our sense of worth, of well-being, even our sanity depends upon our remembering. But, alas, our sense of worth, our well-being, our sanity also depend upon our forgetting.”
—Joyce Appleby (b. 1929)