Book description
Dandelions and hearing aids, a bloodstained cat, a Leonardo drawing, a
corpse with an alibi, a truly poisonous letter...just some of the
unusual clues that Oxford don/detective Gervase Fen and his friend
Inspector Humbleby are confronted with in this sparkling collection of
short mystery stories by one of the great masters of detective fiction.
Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery (usually
credited as Bruce Montgomery) (2 October 1921 - 15 September 1978), an
English crime writer and composer.
Montgomery wrote nine detective novels and two collections of short
stories under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin (taken from a character in
Michael Innes s Hamlet, Revenge!). The stories feature Oxford don
Gervase Fen, who is a Professor of English at the university and a
fellow of St Christopher s College, a fictional institution that Crispin
locates next to St John s College. Fen is an eccentric, sometimes
absent-minded, character reportedly based on the Oxford professor W. E.
Moore. The whodunit novels have complex plots and fantastic, somewhat
unbelievable solutions, including examples of the locked room mystery.
They are written in a humorous, literary and sometimes farcical style
and contain frequent references to English literature, poetry, and
music. They are also among the few mystery novels to break the fourth
wall occasionally and speak directly to the audience.
