Book description
Richard Cadogan, poet and would-be
bon vivant
, arrives for what he thinks will be a relaxing holiday in the city of
dreaming spires. Late one night, however, he discovers the dead body of
an elderly woman lying in a toyshop and is coshed on the head. When he
comes to, he finds that the toyshop has disappeared and been replaced
with a grocery store. The police are understandably skeptical of this
tale but Richard's former schoolmate, Gervase Fen (Oxford Professor of
English Language and Literature), knows that truth is stranger than
fiction (in fiction, at least). Soon the intrepid duo is careening
around town in hot pursuit of clues but just when they think they
understand what has happened, the disappearing-toyshop mystery takes a
sharp turn... 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.
