Innes, Michael Appleby on Ararat
This murder mystery initially reads as farce. It opens during the early years of the Second World War aboard an ocean liner traveling in the South Pacific. The “whale” sighted by one of Innes’ characters turns out to be an Axis submarine, with predictable — though quirky — results for the six or seven people gathered in the ship’s sun-deck café just as a torpedo strikes the ship:
“The sun-deck café — except that it had turned upside down — was much as it had been. But the liner of which it had formed so inconsiderable a part was gone, and — wrenched away — it floated grotesquely upon an empty ocean under and empty sky.”
The survivors float away in their unlikely lifeboat for many days before finally reaching an island peopled by society figures attempting to “wait out” the war. Soon murder combines with a Treasure Islandish subplot which twists and turns before the novel’s hero (Inspector Appleby, C.I.D.) solves all, and in the process detects a German presence on the island to boot.