The first novel in the Gervase Fen series and the first of Crispin's novels which I've read, this was the August 2012 group read for the English Mysteries Book Club. Gervase Fen, an Oxford don and gifted amateur detective, solves the murder of an actress apparently hated by all who knew her. This r...
Robert Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978) wrote comic mystery novels under the pen name of Edmund Crispin, the first of which, "The Case of the Gilded Fly," was published in 1944. Crispin didn't write many novels, but those he did featured the eccentric, absent-minded Oxford don and professor of English a...
I love the brilliant and satirical descriptions of the people, places and time. But the story was overly complicated and I spent longer trying to work out all the literary quotes than who 'did it'.
This later installment is somewhat at odds with the feel of the earlier books -- there is a strange and to me displeasing juxtaposition of more explicit nastiness (animal torture, human dismemberment, child abuse, unhealthy sexuality) with sudden farcical scenes of slapstick. Even more displeasing w...
I love vintage mysteries and am partial to fiction written during the war years. I wanted very much to like Edmund Crispin's books (especially since he's written quite a few), but this is the second one I've read and I can't say I thought much of it. As with the last one, I didn't care enough about ...
Better read than listened to.Yay - the Beeb does a Crispin - Squee! Working at Leiper film studios in London, the amateur detective stumbles upon a suicide and a murder. Read by James Wilby.Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady WHAT beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade Invites my steps...
I *want* to like Crispin, but I just can't. This book was okay. I certainly did learn a few new words: fortalice, atrabilious, tautologist, and steatopygic. But I find him kind of negative and disdainful. This is the second one I've tried and it's considered one of his best, so I probably won't try...
This is my first Crispin book. With all the mysteries I've read from the first half of the 20th century, I don't now how I missed him! I wanted any of a nummber of other titles, but this was the only one at the used bookstore I frequent. I must say I wasn't very impressed. I've read that some of his...
Condition: Used - AcceptableSold by: book-tree £0.49My cover:This is going to be a five star for Mr. Merrythought alone! One can become so immersed in the wit, vocabulary and characters all encompassed in Crispin's immaculate turn of phrase that it is easy to forget that there has been a Mordah!... ...
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