Michael Innes is a favourite author of mine and I've managed to collect nearly all of his Inspector Appleby mysteries (and there are many of them). 'The Secret Vanguard' from 1940 is one of the books that was missing from my collection, and after reading a good review of it on a book blog a few months ago I had to seek it out. I read it very quickly a few days ago and it was quite a gripping adventure, with many similarities to John Buchan's 'The Thirty-Nine Steps', which I'd also recently re-read during my John Buchan reading marathon this Spring. I seem to have read several stories this year with someone being pursued by up-to-no-gooders!
Here is a brief description from the back of the book: "Our lovely heroine and her various accomplices are the object of a superb chase across Scotland by a scheming band of undercover Nazis. Sir John Appleby of Scotland Yard-a master craftsman in the art of crime and counterespionage-comes to the rescue, and the British empire stands secure once more."
