Book description
Yseut Haskell, a pretty but spiteful young actress with a talent for
destroying men's lives, is found dead in a college room just metres
from unconventional Oxford don Gervase Fen's office. The victim is
found wearing an unusual ring, a reproduction of a piece in the
British Museum featuring a gold gilded fly but does this shed any
light on her murder? As they delve deeper into Yseut's unhappy life
the police soon realise that anyone who knew her would have
shot her, but can Fen discover who could have shot her?
The Case of the Gilded Fly is the first Gervase Fen mystery
and is the perfect introduction to this most idiosyncratic, eccentric
and entertaining detective.
Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery, an English
crime writer and composer. He graduated from St John's College, Oxford,
in 1943, with a BA in modern languages, having for two years been its
organist and choirmaster. From 1943 to 1945 he taught at Shrewsbury
School and in 1944 published the first of nine Gervase Fen novels,
The Case of the Gilded Fly
. He became a well respected reviewer of crime, writing for the
Sunday Times
from 1967 until his death in 1978. He also composed the music for many
of the
Carry On
films.
