Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

There's a certain kind of donnish mystery that likes to think it's very self-knowing and meta of which Innes is one exemplar - I bounced off a reread of an Edmund Crispin, who was very similar to the point of name-checking Appleby, very hard indeed on a recent re-read (at least, I think it was a re-read, because I read most of Crispin's Gervase Fen mysteries at one time). There's a certain lumbering playfulness about their enterprise that has not worn well.

Though I do wonder if we had to have these in order to get Sarah Caudwell.