BURIED FOR PLEASURE
UK publication: 1948 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1949 (J. B. Lippincott)
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments:
THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY
US title: OBSEQUIES AT OXFORD
UK publication: 1944 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1945 (J. B. Lippincott); republished 2005 (Felony & Mayhem Press)
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments:
FREQUENT HEARSES
US title: SUDDEN VENGEANCE
UK publication: 1950 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1950 (Dodd, Mead)
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments:
THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON
UK publication: 1977 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1978 (Walker)
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments:
HOLY DISORDERS
UK publication: 1945 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1946 (J. B. Lippincott); republished 2006 (Felony & Mayhem Press)
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments:
THE LONG DIVORCE
Other titles: A NOOSE FOR HER (in abridged US reprint, Mercury, 1952)
UK publication: 1951 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1951 (Dodd, Mead)
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments:
LOVE LIES BLEEDING
UK publication: 1948 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1948 (J. B. Lippincott)
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments:
THE MOVING TOYSHOP
UK publication: 1946 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1946 (J. B. Lippincott)
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments: Richard Cadogan, a well-known English poet, travels to his old university of Oxford looking for a cheap holiday with some excitement. When arriving in the town near midnight, he finds the front door of a toyshop unlocked and investigates. It is bad enough that he finds a dead body upstairs-- an old woman who has been strangled-- and is then himself attacked; but the next morning, when he brings the police to the scene, the toyshop has vanished, its place taken by a greengrocers'--he is told there has never been a toyshop there at all! Fearing for his sanity, he finds his old classmate Fen, and the two of them uncover a plot to steal a miserly woman's estate and go looking for the culprits, using the limericks of Edward Lear as a guide, while avoiding the police, who are not amused by their efforts. The last third of the book swings back and forth from thriller to high comedy as the mastermind is pursued through the Oxford streets and colleges by a disparate (and rather drunken) crowd of students, bicycle-riding dons, police, proctors, and Fen and Cadogan. The inimitable Fen is at his arrogant, impossible, and endearing best throughout; Cadogan is a good foil, who by the end has had much more excitement than he wanted.
SWAN SONG
US title: DEAD AND DUMB
UK publication: 1947 (Victor Gollancz)
US publication: 1947 (J. B. Lippincott); republished under UK title, Walker, 1980.
Detective: Gervase Fen
Plot summary and comments: A mystery set in the world of opera, during the rehearsing of a production of Wagner's "Die Meistersinger von Nuernberg" in Oxford. In a prologue, we meet most of the principals of the production: Adam Langly, tenor, married to Elizabeth, journalist; Joan Davis, a motherly sort of soprano; Peacock, the young and inexperienced conductor; and Edwin Shorthouse, baritone, a gifted singer but a drunken lecher in private life, who bullies the less famous unmercifully. As rehearsals progress, Shorthouse seems determined to undermine the conductor and force him out. There is a climactic row, and that night, Shorthouse's body is discovered in circumstances that suggest a clumsy suicide. The police, led by Sir Richard Freeman, commissioner, and his friend Gervase Fen, soon suspect murder. The problem-solving part of the book is a combination of a locked-room murder (one which seems impossible) with a case in which everyone is a suspect-- for Shorthouse was so universally disliked that many wish they had done the deed. Adam and Elizabeth, a sort of protagonist pair, take a substantial hand in the proceedings and work with Fen to uncover the tangled (and rather unlikely) plot. The action is slow until the very end, when a second murder is committed and Fen nabs the miscreants in the middle of the opening night production itself. The tone is light and Fen's brilliant conversation is up to its usual flair, but Crispin's high-flying imagination about plot and minor characters is not as entertaining as usual.