The New Sonia Wayward

Michael Innes is the pseudonym of John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (30 September 1906 – 12 November 1994). Innes was a Scottish novelist and academic. He is equally well known for the works of literary criticism and contemporary novels published under his real name and for the crime fiction published under his pseudonym. Many devotees of the Innes books were unaware of his other “identity”, and vice versa.

Innes published nearly fifty crime novels and short story collections in his lifetime, but is best known for creating Detective Inspector Sir John Appleby of Scotland Yard, who eventually through the course of the later novels becomes Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

He attended Edinburgh Academy, and later studied English literature at Oriel College, Oxford. Having lectured in English at the University of Leeds from 1930 to 1935, he would then become Jury Professor of English in the University of Adelaide, South Australia. Once he returned to the United Kingdom he lectured at Queens, Belfast from 1946 to 1948. In 1949 he became a Student (Fellow) of Christ Church, Oxford. By the time of his retirement in 1973, he was a professor of the university. He died in Coulsdon.