[With] Innes one can be confident of an elegant tale which, though easily putdownable without itchy suspense, is almost certain to be picked up again; and so it is with Sheiks and Adders, whose locale is a vulgar garden-party. But how, in such a phantasmagoria of improbability, even such a policeman (or ex-policeman) as Appleby may judge plausibility from reality is not to be known.