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The Moving Toyshop - Edmund Crispin
The Moving Toyshop
by: (author)
4.50 10
The Moving Toyshop, first published in 1946, is Edmund Crispin’s most famous novel featuring eccentric amateur detective, Gervase Fen. When a poet, Richard Cadogan, receives an unexpected £50 advance from his publisher for his new poetry book, he decides to go to Oxford for a well deserved... show more
The Moving Toyshop, first published in 1946, is Edmund Crispin’s most famous novel featuring eccentric amateur detective, Gervase Fen.

When a poet, Richard Cadogan, receives an unexpected £50 advance from his publisher for his new poetry book, he decides to go to Oxford for a well deserved holiday. The change of scenery and peace of mind is what he needs to recover his inspiration for writing, but little he suspects that what he envisioned as a leisurely time spent on long walks and visiting friends will turn into a mystery solving adventure full of unexpected and dangerous twists.

After an eventful train journey, Cadogan arrives in Oxford late at night only to realise that he has forgotten the exact address of his stay. Relying on a distant memory of the place he boarded in years ago he accidentally enters a toyshop where, to his surprise and fright, he finds the dead body of a women. Before he knows he is knocked out and spends his first night of the holidays locked in the backroom of the shop. When he finally recovers from the concussion the body is gone and the toyshop turned mysteriously into a grocery store, and Cadogan himself is accused of trespassing and stealing food.

Luckily for the puzzled poet his old university friend, the professor of literature, Gervase Fen is there ready to plunge into the midst of this mystery.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9781448216611 (1448216613)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Reader
Pages no: 215
Edition language: English
Series: Gervase Fen (#3)
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Community Reviews
Themis-Athena's Garden of Books
Themis-Athena's Garden of Books rated it
4.0 A murder is committed -- and hilarity ensues.
Both Edmund Crispin's Moving Toyshop and Alan Melville's Quick Curtain are mentioned in the "Making Fun of Murder" chapter of Martin Edwards's Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. Both are excellent examples of writers taking something as horrific as murder and turning it right around and into a fa...
Themis-Athena's Garden of Books
Themis-Athena's Garden of Books rated it
4.0 A murder is committed -- and hilarity ensues.
Both Edmund Crispin's Moving Toyshop and Alan Melville's Quick Curtain are mentioned in the "Making Fun of Murder" chapter of Martin Edwards's Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. Both are excellent examples of writers taking something as horrific as murder and turning it right around and into a fa...
Murder by Death
Murder by Death rated it
4.5 The Moving Toyshop (Gervais Fen)
Martin Edwards sums up The Moving Toyshop perfectly: "Few crime novels can match Edmund Crispin's most celebrated mystery for sheer exuberance." Exuberance is the perfect word for this book; it's comic without being comedic, and it's obvious (to me, anyway) that the author had a great time writing...
Bettie's Books
Bettie's Books rated it
4.0 The Moving Toyshop (Gervase Fen #3) by Edmund Crispin
bookshelves: published-1946, adventure, classic, britain-england, amusing, mystery-thriller, one-penny-wonder Recommended to ☯Bettie☯ by: Lee Aiken; Libbeth Read in April, 2009 If ever there was a precursor to the Brentford Trilogy by Robert Rankin - this is it. Wonderful fun. On the last page F...
BVLawson
BVLawson rated it
4.0 The Moving Toyshop (Classic Crime)
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...
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