Edmund Crispin: The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944)

Edition: Penguin, 1971
Review number: 845

One of Crispin's best Gervase Fen novels, The Case of the Gilded Fly is about murder in a repertory company in Oxford. Nowadays, the decline in theatregoing has killed off the provincial rep scene which used to be so important to the theatre community, and most British theatres outside London play home to sequences of touring productions of lightweight pieces sold to the public by a star name, usually a TV actor, rather than being the home of their own company.

One of the actors in the company, Yseut Haskell, is an unpleasant woman who not only believes herself more talented than she really is but enjoys such pastimes as taking other women's boyfriends. When she dies in a poorly faked suicide, not only are there many candidates for the murderer, but an amateur detective like Fen feels almost that the killer ought to be given a chance to escape.

The novel is full of the ironic touches which are Crispin's trademark; Fen referring to himself as "the only literary critic turned detective in fiction" is a typical example. The author also expends some effort in making Fen seem eccentric to the point of disagreeableness; he is not one of the cosier detectives in fiction.

Though not as inventive as The Moving Toyshop, the Oxford setting seems to have inspired Crispin here too. The puzzle is quite easy, but that doesn't stop the novel being entertaining. The title is partly a reference to a strange ring placed on Yseut's finger after her death, but also to King Lear (as the ring is meant to point out), which makes it a reference to Yseut's immorality.

Edmund Crispin: The Moving Toyshop (1946)

Edition: Penguin, 1958 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 733

Set almost entirely in the city of Oxford, The Moving Toyshop begins with the accidental discovery of a body in a toyshop by a distinguished poet. When he returns with the police (some time later, as he was attacked and knocked unconscious), the toyshop is not there at all, and the police are inclined to believe he imagined the whole thing because of the blow to the head. However, his friend Gervase Fen, professor of English and amateur sleuth, thinks differently, and the two of them uncover a bizarre mystery.

The Moving Toyshop is a classic of the crime genre, but it is also a funny self-mocking satire. The plot is very silly - much of it hinges around a bizarre will in which legatees have been chosen because they are like Edward Lear limericks (a young lady of Ryde, for example). The characters are often very aware that they are in a book (at one point choosing a direction because of the location of the offices of Gollancz who originally published the novel), as well as providing comedy in themselves. The Fen novels of Edmund Crispin are often enjoyably over the top, but The Moving Toyshop is more so than most of them. Funny and engrossing, it is one of my favourite detective novels.

Edmund Crispin: Fen Country (1979)

Edition: Penguin, 1981
Review number: 688

The description of Fen Country on its cover as twenty six detective stories featuring Gervase Fen is a slight exaggeration; only around half the stories are actually mysteries solved by Crispin's famous detective. They are generally, though, of high quality, and several of them are quite funny.

Writing a mystery in short story format is a difficult art. At novel length, the classic murder myster writer has space to introduce six or seven potential suspects, all with backgrounds making them suspicious and giving them motives for killing the victim, as well as clues to mislead the reader. Many novels have denouements which are longer than any of the stories in this collection. To fit enough into a short story for it to have any chance to compete is very difficult, and efforts by even some of the best known mystery authors just show how hard it is (the short stories of Dorothy L. Sayers are a case in point). The achievements of Conan Doyle, who wrote so many classic short stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon, are shown in their correct perspective by this. And it is, thankfully, of the Sherlock Holmes stories that the reader of Fen Country is most consistently reminded.

Their structure is very similar, with the detective usually solving the crime by picking up some small detail - and here the puzzles are sufficiently difficult that I would defy the majority of readers to solve any of the mysteries even with this hint.

The most interesting story - not the best, because it is rather obvious - is We Know You're Busy Writing..., which is about the way that people assume that writing is not really work and how frustrating writers find this. The story is one of the amusing ones, and it is probably the most memorable.

Edmund Crispin: Love Lies Bleeding (1948)

Edition: MacMillan, 1999
Review number: 570

We used to have Speech Days at the school which I attended, days on which prizes were given out and the boys and parents had to endure some of the most boring speeches imaginable. (The one in my final year, which I did not attend because of university entrance interviews, was easily the most lively: the headmaster unexpectedly declared that with government interference it was no longer possible for the school to offer a good education, and effectively resigned.) At Castrevenford, where this novel is set, the event is just as dull, and also contains a play and a sports demonstration.

Speech day in the year in which Gervase Fen, Professor of English at Oxford and amateur detective, gave the prizes was of course (this being a crime novel) distinguished by the murder of two teachers at the school and the disappearance of a pupil from the girls' school connected to Castrevenford. (One of the dead teachers is named Love; hence - partly - the title of the novel.)

Love Lies Bleeding is typical of Crispin's detective novels, with a complex puzzle combined with knowing and ironic use of the conventions of the genre. (This goes right up to the point of declaring that events chronicled would not make a good detective novel.) To some readers, Fen may seem rather tiresome, and he is certainly unbelievably secretive. His refusal to tell the police what he has worked out almost allows the murderer to escape, and it has no motive other than his own vanity. (The real reason, of course, is to inform the reader that they now have the clues needed to work out the solution without giving it away before the very end of the novel.) Nevertheless, the novels have a unique place in the genre and a charm of their own which makes them well worth reading.

Edmund Crispin: Holy Disorders (1946)

Edition: Penguin, 1990
Review number: 415

Summoned by a telegram sent by his old friend Gervase Fen asking him to take over temporarily from the incapacitated organist at Tolnbridge Cathedral, Geoffrey Vintner finds himself involved in a strange plot: several attempts are made to prevent him successfully making the journey down to Devon.

Once he arrives at Tolnbridge, it becomes clear only that the organist was put out of action by an attack from a group of people, yet it is not at all obvious who they are or what they wanted. It may be connected with radio broadcasts made to the German forces from the area, detailing fleet movements from an important naval base nearby (the novel is contemporary to when it was written). One of Tolnbridge's claims to fame as a diocese is for the persistence of witches covens in the area, and some trials in the seventeenth century. Rumours have started of black magical ceremonies being practised in the area once again, and the attack may be connected with these groups.

Crispin binds all these elements together to create a mystifying puzzle for Fen to unravel. Fen is one of the more unsympathetic detectives in the genre - vain, eccentric, childish and prone to keep information back ready for later dramatic revelation. He is always ahead of the reader - Crispin has quite difficult puzzles, and I suspect that he cheats (In Holy Disorders, Fen says "I know who it is" but won't elaborate, and this comes some pages before I think there is enough evidence to be definite about the murderer.)

Edmund Crispin: Frequent Hearses (1950)

Edition: Penguin, 1987
Review number: 282

Out of his habitual Oxford world, Crispin's famous academic Gervase Fen is acting as a literary consultant to a film about Alexander Pope when a young actress who was to take a part in the film suddenly commits suicide. When a man dies at a script conference for the same film, Fen suspects something more sinister than a sudden illness. Tests for poison confirm that his death was indeed a murder, but who committed it? And what connection does it have to Gloria Scott's suicide? The case hinges on the true identity of Gloria, who took that name when she began acting; but no one knows anything of her earlier than two years ago, and someone has taken pains to hide her identity, removing named articles from her flat after her death.

Frequent Hearses is an atmospheric crime novel, leading to a bizarre conclusion chasing a murderer through an ornamental hedge maze. The mystery is presented in a very opaque way, the plot being carefully structured so that the strange goings on mystify the reader until Fen explains them later on.