This is a collection of 26 very short stories, all of the detective whodunit variety, many featuring Crispin's eccentric Oxford English professor, Gervase Fen.The stories are so short that there is no room for character development or the weird side trips that make full-length adventures with Ger...
Brilliant. Funny, erudite, and (forgive me) postmodern before meta was a meme. quotes to follow. I would have given it five stars but the plot devices were nowhere near seamless, though self-consciously presented and therefore, if not effective, then certainly endearing. Some of the more qu...
Originally published on my blog here in January 2000.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 preve...
Oxford don Gervase Fen is at the film studios to advise about a film biography of Alexander Pope, when he learns of Gloria's death. She appears to have little reason for wanting to kill herself. But when a cameraman is poisoned before his eyes, Fen finds himself involved in murder.
Professor Gervase Fen, always in pursuit of a witty epigram, declares candidacy for Parliament, ready to serve the good people of "Where was it again?" His political ambitions are sidetracked by the murdered policeman who crops up on the campaign trail, the escaped naked lunatic "Woodrow Wilson",...
Who burglarised the train heading for Victoria Station, and whatever became of its conductor?Did the village idiot or Mrs Foley murder the mean-spirited Edgar Foley, or could the constable be responsible for the devious deed?Who on Earth will be able to untangle the affair of the disappearing car...
He was tall and stringy, with a weather-beaten complexion, a long straight nose, bright, bird-like eyes, and thin brown hair which glistened with bay-rum; and he wore jodhpurs, riding-boots, a violent check hacking coat, and a yellow tie with horses’ heads on it. In his hand he carried a green po...
He was aware, therefore, that his errand was very exceptional; so far as Linster knew, this was the first time that an Englishman, in England, had hired another man to commit murder for him since the case of Ley and Smith. That occasion had ended badly; but for a fee of two or three hundred pound...
In an English Garden This is a riotous assembly of fashionable people, of both sexes, at a private house, consisting of some hundreds, not unaptly stiled a drum, from the noise and emptiness of the entertainment. Tobias Smollett: Advice, a Satire 1 ‘Well, Well,’ said Fen. He folded up the last of...
The Case is Closed Live we for now, Time is unstable; Vain is the vow Broken the fable … Maxwell ‘And the key to the whole thing,’ said Gervase Fen, ‘was simply this: the shot we heard was not the shot that killed Yseut at all.’ He, Helen, Nigel and Sir Richard were once again in the room looking...