Gilbert Averell avoids some of the rigours of taxation by living for part of each year in France. His look-alike friend, Georges, suggests that they swap passports for a short spell, and Gilbert seizes the opportunity. However, a number of incidents, suggest the offer was not made out of simple friendship.John Innes Mackintosh Stewart was born in Edinburgh. He attended Oxford where he studied English. He taught English in universities at the University of Adelaide, in South Australia. Stewart published novels, short stories, studies in literature, biographies, and plays. Under his name, he wrote scholarly works such as Character and Motive in Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, and Thomas Hardy. As Michael Innes, he wrote over fifty detective novels with Inspector John Appleby of Scotland Yard in London as the main character. These titles include Death at the President's Lodging, The Journeying Boy, Lament for a Maker, Operation Pax, the Crabtree Affair and Silence Observed. Stewart died on November 12, 1994. Gilbert Averell avoids some of the rigours of taxation by living for part of each year in France—but he is unhappy about the number of weeks he spends away from his native country. So when his look-alike friend, Georges, suggests that they swap passports for a short spell, Gilbert seizes the opportunity. However, a number of incidents, involving Gilbert's sister and nephew, begin to suggest that Georges's offer was not made out of simple friendship. Going it Alone Gilbert Averell avoids some of the rigours of taxation by living for part of each year in France - but he is unhappy about the number of weeks he spends away from his native country. So when his look-alike friend, Georges, suggests that they swap passports for a short spell, Gilbert seizes the opportunity. However, a number of incidents, involving Gilbert's sister and nephew, begin to suggest that Georges's offer was not made out of simple friendship. As Meredith, an academic, stands in a Bloomsbury tobacconist waiting for his two ounces of tobacco, he murmurs a verse of 'London, a Poem' and is astounded when a trap door opens into the London Catacombs, bringing him face to face with the Horton Venus, by Titian. From then on he is trapped in a maze of the illicit art trade, in the company of the redoubtable Jane Halliwell
