The Case of the Gilded Fly

Gervase Fen #1

by Edmund Crispin

Theatre companies are notorious hotbeds of intrigue, and few are more intriguing than the company currently in residence at Oxford University. Center-stage is the beautiful, malicious Yseut, a mediocre actress with a stellar talent for destroying men. Rounding out the cast are more than a few of her past and present conquests, and the women who love them. And watching from the wings is Professor Gervase Fen-scholar, wit, and fop extraordinaire-who would rather solve crimes than expound on English literature. When Yseut is murdered, Fen finally gets his wish. Gilded Fly, originally published in 1944, was both Fen's first outing and the debut of the pseudonymous Crispin (in reality, composer Bruce Montgomery).

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Crime, British Literature, Detective, Mystery Thriller, Classics

225 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of (Robert) Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978). His first crime novel and musical composition were both accepted for publication while he was still an undergraduate at Oxford. After a brief spell of teaching, he became a full-time writer and composer (particularly of film music. He wrote the music for six of the Carry On films. But he was also well known for his concert and church music). He also edited science fiction anthologies, and became a regular crime fiction reviewer for The Sunday Times. His friends included Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Agatha Christie.

He had always been a heavy drinker and, unfortunately, there was a long gap in his writing during a time when he was suffering from alcohol problems. Otherwise he enjoyed a quiet life (enlivened by music, reading, church-going and bridge) in Totnes, a quiet corner of Devon, where he resisted all attempts to develop or exploit the district, visiting London as little as possible. He moved to a new house he had built at Week, a hamlet near Dartington, in 1964, then, late in life, married his secretary Ann in 1976, just two years before he died from alcohol related problems. His music was composed using his real name, Bruce Montgomery.

source: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/philipg/...

Reviews

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

”The trouble is, we’re all so damnably intelligent at Oxford, “ he said irritably. “the fact of murder, which rouses an immediate instinct of self-preservation in the unsophisticated, has to penetrate to our animal souls through a thick barrier of sophisms; apparently in the present case it hasn’t even done that--merely bounced off again. Yet murder remains murder, none the less and there’s no way of getting around it.”


Robert Bruce Montgomery A.K.A. Edmund Crispin was a composer as well as crime mystery writer.

The famous playwright Robert Warner has decided to launch his latest literary effort in a playhouse in Oxford. His last couple of plays have bombed in the West End and a fresh start in Oxford might be the ticket to re-establish his reputation. He brings with him Rachel West, his Jewish mistress of five years, who is to be the star of the show. His entourage also includes a menagerie of actors and actresses, but the one that is of most interest for the purpose of this review is Yseut Haskell.

Yseut had a brief fling with Robert a few years ago. He did not join a small, select group of men when he fell into bed with Yseut. In fact, if all of her past lovers were assembled in the bedroom they would have found it difficult to find enough space to perform the deed. She has her charms. They just happen to reside at the shallow end of the pool.

”To a considerable extent we are all of necessity preoccupied with ourselves, but with her the preoccupation was exclusive, and largely of a sexual nature into the bargain. She was still young--twenty-five or so--with full breasts and hips a little crudely emphasized by the clothes she wore, and a head of magnificent and much cared-for red hair. There, however--at least as far as the majority of people were concerned--her claims to attractiveness ended. Her features, pretty enough in a conventional way, bore little hints of the character within--a trifle of selfishness, a trifle of conceit; her conversation was intellectually pretentious and empty; her attitude to the other sex was too outspokenly come-hither to please more than a very few of them and her attitude to her own malicious and spiteful.”

Yseut is the type of woman that no woman wants around her man. She can keep up the pretense of being more than just an intriguing silhouette long enough to seduce a man; she just can’t keep a man. She is reckless with her affections and rarely abandons one lover before trapping another. She creates hate and discord with the women who attempt to compete with her. She leaves men emotionally battered and vengeful. She makes enemies along the lines of a Genghis Khan, but without his ability to behead them once she is done with them.

She is perfectly designed to be murdered.

This is a golden age, locked room, English mystery and those readers that like those type of books will love the twists and turns of a plot where nearly everyone is a suspect and nearly everyone lacks an alibi. One character was alone reading in her room. I thought to myself that it would be just my luck to have a murder occur within my vicinity and my only alibi is the Graham Greene I packed in my luggage. Yseut is so uniquely odious to everyone she knows that the suspects don’t even attempt to feign distress for her death.

In the beginning of the book Edmund Crispin writes a description of each of the characters. It is simply marvelous writing laced with the proper amount of snarkiness, and also with a depthness and deftness that gave me a wonderful grasp of each of the characters. Some reviewers have complained about keeping track of the number of characters in this book, but the beginning really helped me to sort them out. I think it also helped that I brewed some Constant Comment tea (normally I’m a staunch Earl Grey man) and read the book over the span of a languid Sunday afternoon.

The language is elevated above a normal mystery. The literary allusions are numerous and at times had me pausing to ascertain who, what, or where a rather embarrassing number of times. The book is barely 200 pages for goodness sakes. Luckily, some johnny on the spot, has listed all the literary references in the book on Wikipedia.

John Aubrey (one of the characters, who tells Fen that he knows all the intimate facts about others, calls himself a "latterday Aubrey")

Nicholas Breton's "Phyllida and Corydon"

John Dickson Carr (Gideon Fell mentioned)

Lewis Carroll (having dozed off during a conversation, Fen wakes up with a little shriek, "like the Dormouse")

Charles Churchill

Henry Constable ("white as the sun, fair as the lily")

Pierre Corneille (Fen refers to the "Cornelian dilemma" he faces)

Richard Crashaw

William Dunbar

T. S. Eliot ("the skull beneath the skin", Eliot's characterisation of John Webster's vision and interests)

Faust (Mephistopheles)

John Ford

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Torquato Tasso and Die Wahlverwandtschaften

Heinrich Heine's "Loreleylied" ("Ich weiß nicht was soll es bedeuten")

Robert Herrick ("A sweet disorder in the dress / kindles in clothes a wantonness")

Horace ("deprendi miserum est")

M. R. James's ghost stories

Ben Jonson's Volpone

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses (Fen compares Yseut Haskell to the Marquise de Merteuil)

Edward Lear's "The Quangle Wangle's Hat"

Wyndham Lewis

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" ("The grave's a fine and private place")

Henry de Montherlant (in particular his creation, the character of Pierre Costals, an aristocratic writer, libertine and dedicated bachelor)

The legend of the Questing Beast

William Shakespeare's King Lear (the book title), Pericles, Timon of Athens (mention of the two prostitutes, Phrynia and Timandra), and Measure for Measure("Ay, but to die, and go we know not where")

Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Critic ("Mr. Puff, as he knows all this, why does Sir Walter go on telling him?")

Rex Warner's The Professor (1938)

Charles Williams

The Fen that they refer to is our main character Gervase Fen, a college professor who becomes bored if there isn’t an occasional murder to sort out. He is highly intelligent, but also occasionally highly annoying. He loves nothing more than laying out a few facts for someone and then saying if you can’t figure out who murdered him from these hints than you are an idiot. We forgive him though because it is such a marvel to watch his brain work. He and Sherlock Holmes might have been best of friends or might well have murdered one another. Of course, they would be too clever to ever be caught if they put their mind to murder.

I have it on good authority that the third Gervase Fen is the best. It has an intriguing title The Moving Toyshop. If you are one of those people that may only give the time to the “best of a series” then I suggest that you start with that one. For me, well, I’m a diehard, read the series in order whenever possible, kind of guy. I know that I’m not destined to live forever, but some things must be done properly and with a cup of tea.

I have also reviewed the second book in the series Holy Disorders.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

[Sonja Rosa Lisa ♡ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Das war leider eine Enttäuschung für mich. Es klang so gut; ein Mord in den 1940er Jahren. Alleine die Zeit ist ja schon interessant.
Aber die ganze Geschichte war so zäh und leider für mich langweilig. Das Buch hat es überhaupt nicht geschafft, mich zu fesseln.
Dabei mag ich Cosy Crime sehr gerne. Ich kann auf Spannung gut verzichten, wenn das Drumherum stimmt, die Atmosphäre, die Charaktere.
Das war hier leider nicht der Fall. Es war so mühsam. Mag sein, dass es der Schreibstil war, mit dem ich mich einfach nicht anfreunden konnte.
Auf jeden Fall hat es leider überhaupt keinen Spaß gemacht, dieses Buch zu lesen, auch wenn die Grundidee weiterhin gut ist. Die Umsetzung war nicht meins.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a long gap in his writing during a time when he was suffering from alcohol problems. Otherwise he enjoyed a quiet life enlivened by music, reading, church-going and bridge, Wikipedia states, adding that he married his secretary two years before his death at age 56.

This very much fits with the sense his writing gives of Montgomery (Crispin was a nom de plume) as a person. He writes very cleverly, and with a sort of academic enthusiasm, but does not seem to understand people very well. His characters and their motivations seem awkward and often unconvincing, especially the women. I got the sense that he had never actually interacted with women on a personal level but rather drew his predisposedly-sexist inferences about them from watching the behavior of young people on dates in restaurants. Every woman is entirely preoccupied with her own attractiveness and obtaining a man, either or marry or to arouse jealousy. All women really want is to get married so they can stay home and look after their husbands. And once they are married, unless they are adulterous sluts, they are like pets.

Some lines to show that I am not being over-sensitive to mores of the past:

Fen gazed at [his wife] with something of the triumphant and sentimental pride of a dog-owner whose pet has succeeded in balancing a biscuit on its nose.

A motley collection of women attached to the younger men and for the most part engaged in manipulating and focusing their attention upon themselves, completed the gathering.

From the discussion of underclothes they passed by a natural transition to the sempiternal feminine discussion of sex.

"Oh, Donald, how lovely that will be. I--I shall give up theatre and keep house for you. I think that's really what I've wanted all along."

The couple in the last quote wasn't even dating, btw. Donald had been ignoring plain Jean to hang out after the hot slutty actress, but now she's dead so he has to settle. Nothing spells "devoted husband" like a guy forgetting his murdered love within a couple days!

I found this recurrent and often gratuitous sexism sufficiently annoying that it diminished my enjoyment of the writing, which is the main attraction. The mystery itself is so-so as to construction. The circumstances are rather implausible and it's pretty obvious who did it

Oh, and Crispin basically says it was excusable that the victim was murdered because she was a self-centered, trouble-making slut and everyone hated her. The characters had all agreed to not turn the murderer in to the inept police and only did because another person was killed. Which is kind of obviously the reason you don't let murderers go free, eh?

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Golden Age detective novel begins with eleven people arriving in wartime Oxford, most of whom are involved with putting on a new play out of the glare of London critics. We are told that within the week, three of these people will die by violence, and the author sets the scene nicely with a cast of characters that seem full of jealousy and intrigue. These include the playwright Robert Warner, actress Yseut Haskell who seems universally disliked, organist Donald Fellowes, who is in love with the uncaring Yseut, and journalist Nigel Blake, who studied under Gervase Fen and is hoping to meet actress Helen Haskell, Yseut's sister, and who is the main character we witness events through. He is a likeable and pleasant young man who has been invalided out of the war after Dunkirk and whose knowledge of both Fen and the cast tie the book together nicely.

As Nigel attends rehearsals we witness the anger, jealousy and dispute that Yseut causes. Events escalate until they end in murder. This is almost a locked door mystery, with a lot of motives, no alibis and an almost impossible crime. Still, Gervase Fen, who is great friends with Sir Richard Freeman, the Chief Constable of Oxford, states he knows who is responsible for the crime. Gervase is a "cherubic, naive, volatile and entirely delightful" character, totally uninhibited and often rude, extremely intelligent and a specialist in English Literature, which is Sir Richard's passion in the same way that Fen is obsessed with crime.

This is a very atmospheric novel. I enjoyed the setting, with the use of rep theatre, Oxford University and the wartime era being used to great effect. The plot was convuluted but interesting, the characters good. Yseult is the wicked witch of the piece, causing scenes of arguments and mistrust in every scene she appears in. Some may feel certain characters are criticised unfairly on grounds of morality, but you must remember when the book is set and judge it on that basis. Many authors from this period use language and state arguments that are not seen as acceptable now, but were perfectly normal then. If you like books set in this era and enjoy authors such as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Nicholas Blake or Christianna Brand, you will certainly enjoy this.

[Phrynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first book by this author was The Moving Toyshop and I enjoyed it so much I went searching for the first book in the series.

The Case of the Gilded Fly begins in a very nicely constructed way as each of the important people in the book make their way to Oxford on the train. Singly or in pairs we are introduced to each character and learn a little bit about them by the way they approach the journey. Eventually we discover they are a group of actors visiting to perform a play. When one of them apparently commits suicide Gervase is involved and he quickly determines it is in fact a murder, but who could have done it and how?

If you enjoy the writing style of the Golden Age of mysteries then this is a book for you. It is beautifully written and full of literary references and witty comments. Gervase Fen is an excellent main character, always a step ahead of everyone else. I loved the character of his wife too, so calm and matter of fact in the face of all her husband's activity. The mystery is clever and there are many red herrings, especially as nearly everyone seemed to have a reason for wanting the victim dead. The real problem lies in how on earth it was done. I had to wait for Gervase to explain that to me.

I enjoyed it all very much and will definitely search out book two.

[Lois Bujold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, hm.

My second go at this writer/series, circling back to Book #1 in the hopes it might improve things. I observe one needs to read Crispin with dictionaries (multiple) to hand, not only for the erudite vocabulary of some of the erudite characters, but because these books are of the era that left quotes in foreign (though only European and Latin) languages untranslated in the blithe assumption that its readers must share the same culture and education as its author. With online dictionaries and Google Translate now to hand, this isn't such a problem as it might have been for readers twenty or more years ago. But expect either to interrupt one's reading to check, or pass over them disregarded as verbal speed bumps, depending on one's energy.

It's also written in a sometimes heavy-handed omniscient, which is tricky for a mystery in which some information must be concealed until the denouement, mysteries relying as they do on climaxes of revelation. Heyer, in her mysteries of the same period also in omniscient, manages this more gracefully, so I blame the author rather than his times. But here we several times get things like, at the end of a prologue introducing the dramatis personae (rather literally, as the plot revolves around a stage play to debut in wartime Oxford) on a wittily described train ride from London, the narrator breaking in to announce portentously, "And within the week that followed three of these eleven died by violence." Artificial suspense? Writer not confident in his ability to interest the reader? The omniscient narrator knows it all, and wants you to know he knows it, too?

The mechanics of the complicated murder, once finally explained, failed to convince me.

The other problem with omniscient is that it tends to be an emotionally distancing choice, compared to tight third or first person, where we get deeply into the heads of the point-of-view characters. Heyer manages both. Less deftly employed, it can invite the reader to share a narrator's Olympian disdain for his subjects. Crispin isn't that bad, but there are moments.

Period-authentic sexism much as before, with knock-on effects on the female characters who tended to feel more plot-mannequin-ish than the males ones to me. The book got one more star from me than it might have because of the fascination of the setting.

Ta, L.

[Bionic Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Case of the Gilded Fly is a golden age English mystery novel by Edmund Crispin, the first of a series of nine featuring the detecting don, Gervase Fen. Edmund Crispin is a pseudonym for Bruce Montgomery, who apparently based his eccentric and absent-minded amateur detective on his tutor Professor W. G. Moore. Gervase Fen is also a Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford; a fellow of St Christopher’s College, a fictional institution which Edmund Crispin located next to St John’s College.

I had already read one novel featuring Gervase Fen, so decided that the logical place to start would be with this one from 1944, which I had heard was a locked-room mystery. To be honest, this story was an odd fish to introduce Gervase Fen. The first chapter took place on a train approaching Oxford (although as the author pointed out, there was still a good half hour to go between Didcot and Oxford). Its purpose was clear: to introduce us to a mind-numbingly Agatha Christie-length list of characters, most of whom we would forget after the first half dozen. Gervase Fen was included in the company, but unless you had read another in the series, you would forget him. Perhaps at this point Edmund Crispin had not realised that he would wrote any more mystery novels … and certainly not that Gervase Fen would prove to be such a popular amateur detective.

Once having arrived in Oxford, the chapter ended. We then learnt a little more about some of the characters via a theatrical group (perhaps Edmund Crispin was involved in OUDS) and this reminded me of a J.B. Priestley novel - also very much of its time - but Edmund Crispin’s writing was nowhere near as engaging. In fact by the end of chapter 4 I was beginning to get bored with this audio book, but decided to trust the author to bring a little wit into his writing soon. Either that, or at least give us a body! It had been made pretty clear who most people would prefer to be out of the way.

Now I began to recognise the author’s style, when Gervase Fen came centre stage. But at this point the writing style became most peculiar. We had the words, “peroration” (now that’s a word I’d heard before but couldn’t quite recall its meaning offhand), “objurgatory” and “logomachy” all within a couple of paragraphs. Perhaps it was to set the tone for Gervase Fen’s educated erudition, or perhaps to show that he was impossibly ensconced in the ivory towers of Oxford’s acadaemia - except for one small thing. These words did not drip from Gervase Fen’s cultured tongue, but were part of the omniscient narration. Very odd.

Want some more? How about “constatation”, “acerbly”, “sempiternal” (I quite like this one, although to have another word than “everlasting” meaning “of never-ending duration” seems a bit redundant). And I confess that I drew a complete blank with “valavant shaft”. An Ancient Greek arrow-wielding hero, perhaps? The context did not help much. And in case you are wondering, there are no typos here (except perhaps with the valavant shaft). All of them are as they appear in the dictionary, even though sometimes they may look like a different word with an entirely different root and meaning.

Even more peculiar was chapter 5, which consisted almost entirely of a pastiche M.R. Jamesian ghost story, told by an M.R. Jamesian old codger to boot, and very good it was too! Well worth publishing on its own merits. I had no idea if this story could ever have any relevance to the murder mystery tableau we had just been privy to (unlike the ancient fellow relating what he claimed to be his college reminiscences and his captive audience) but the oddity of it all was intriguing enough for me to want to carry on.

And you probably want to know a bit about the story itself, which is after all why people choose to read a mystery novel, and not for its erudition! If you have been good enough to stay with me this far, you might be beginning to understand my frustration.

So … we are in Oxford, in October 1940, and the action centres around the local repertory theatre and the university. The brilliant new playwright Robert Warner has chosen the Oxford rep. for the première of his new play, and has arrived with his leading lady - and mistress - Rachel West. Also in the cast are Yseut Haskell, (whose name the narrator of my audio book had terrible difficulty pronouncing! “Just say ‘Isolde!’” I wanted to shout at him), a flamboyant, promiscuous and spitefully cruel young woman, and her quiet half-sister Helen.

Most of the action is seen through the eyes of Nigel Blake, a journalist who used to be a student of Gervase Fen. We also meet Nicholas Barclay, a university drop-out with independent means, and Donald Fellowes, an introverted organist and choirmaster at St. Christopher’s College who is hopelessly infatuated with Yseut. (Interestingly, Edmund Crispin was the organ scholar and choirmaster at St. John’s College, and went on to be a prolific composer of film music. Perhaps he saw some of himself in Donald Fellowes.)

Also featured is Jean Whitelegge, the secretary of the theatre club who is in turn attracted to the shy Donald Fellowes. This small intimate group with their petty jealousies and squabbles are all present at a party, during the course of which a drunken Yseut threatens Robert Warner with the host’s revolver. About a year earlier the two had had a brief affair, but it had been Robert Warner rather than Yseut who had ended it.

By now, we have decided who deserves to get murdered in this story, because they have so many enemies. Sure enough Yseut has been shot, with the very weapon she had been brandishing the night before. On her finger is an unusual Egyptian-style gilded ring bearing a winged insect (the “gilded fly” of the title).

As it seems to have been impossible for anyone to have entered the room unobserved, the police suspect suicide. But Gervase Fen, (who is deferred to by the police, just as gentlemen amateur detectives often are in period fiction of this type) declares that it is murder, but will not explain his reasons. The investigation proceeds with many red herrings, and there is a budding romance between Nigel Blake and Helen Haskell. Then unexpectedly just a few hours before the play is due to open, Donald Fellowes is murdered in the organ loft of his college chapel during evensong.

As everyone expects, the play is a literary masterpiece and an enormous success. Gervase Fen with the help of the police assembles all the suspects and, in true Hercule Poirot fashion, prepares to announce the identity of the murderer.

So much has made of the play’s triumph that we begin to think it is too good to be true. Sure enough, before Gervase Fen has accused him, Robert Warner pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot anyone who follows him. He attempts to escape across the stage but the safety curtain falls on him, crushing and killing him.

The final chapter is a little reprise of the first, with the remaining characters travelling the return journey, a few brief weeks later.

To be honest, I wouldn’t start with this one. The structure is a bit odd, and having to dive for a dictionary all the time is irritating. These words are so seldom used that I can’t help but think it is a bit of intellectual posturing on the part of the author. It was written in his final year as an undergraduate at St John’s College, Oxford, over just ten days in 1943. He was friendly with Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis, and according to the former, he spent ten days of his Easter vacation writing in an intensive burst of activity “with his J nib and silver pen-holder”.

Did I guess the murderer? Yes, although only for the motive; I could not see the method, which proved a little fantastic: a gun shot through at least two open windows across the quad, and hitting its target. Apparently Edmund Crispin often wrote somewhat unbelievable solutions. What about the title? Well gilded fly references Shakespeare’s “King Lear”: “the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight”. It is quite obvious who the lecherous person is, Yseut, although the ring itself is a bit of a red herring.

Just as with all Edmund Crispin’s novels, there are frequent references to English literature, poetry and classics. It can be fun spotting these, but again it is not what most people expect from a detective novel. A year after its publication in England, The Case of the Gilded Fly was published as “Obsequies at Oxford” in the United States. This arguably gives a better idea of the contents, although I personally prefer the original title.

I was tempted to rate this as two stars, but on reflection that judgement would probably be just as much a reflection of my reverse snobbery as Edmund Crispin’s writing demonstrates a posturing intellectualism. Perhaps it is better to forgive the excesses of youth, given that he went on to write such critically acclaimed examples of the genre. I shall keep it at my default of three stars.

Would you enjoy it? Well in The Case of the Gilded Fly Edmund Crispin was emulating his favourite crime writers, John Dickson Carr, Gladys Mitchell and Michael Innes. In summing up his style after his death, one critic wrote that Edmund Crispin’s novels were never meant to be realistic, but were:

“simply an entertainment for educated readers, in which a backbone consisting of ingenious, perfectly serious, detective puzzles was most engagingly adorned with academic wit and precise good writing”.

That seems spot-on to me. If you enjoy books written in a humorous, literary and sometimes even farcical style, you may well enjoy those of Edmund Crispin.

The edition I listened to was narrated by Paul Panting.

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This first detective novel by Edmund Crispin (nom de plume of composer Robert Bruce Montgomery) has all the characteristics beloved by fans of his masterpiece The Moving Toyshop: the hothouse Oxford University atmosphere, the ornate and impish prose style, the bewildering superabundance of literary allusion, and that memorable—if not quite beloved—character, the eccentric English professor (and amateur detective) Gervase Fen.

When actress Iseult is found shot in the head with a pistol days before the debut performance of Robert Warner’s Metromania, almost everyone involved in the Oxford repertory production could be a suspect. After all, Iseult used her sexuality so shamelessly—and ruthlessly—that she was disliked, almost universally, by both women and men. Could it be a suicide, as the police initially suppose? Or could it have been—as Gervase Fen believes—murder?

As I mentioned before, this book has in it all the things Crispin fans have come to love; unfortunately, though, Crispin has not yet perfected his approach, and therefore has not yet devised how to make the reader love them. The wonderful thing about The Moving Toyshop is that everything—the college atmosphere, the ornateness, the impishness, the arcane allusions—work together to create an unapologetic, self-contained world, as removed from—and disdainful of—realism as The Pirates of Penzance or The Importance of Being Earnest.

Without the charm of the mature Crispin’s self-contained world, we are left with something like Agatha Christie but worse: a wearying list of cardboard character suspects, a detailed floor-plan diagram, a dozen red herrings, and an unnecessary cryptogram thrown in, presumably for the hell of it.

The Case of the Gilded Fly is occasionally amusing, but not memorable. Definitely not a Crispin classic.

[Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

2 October 2021 marks the 100th birthday of Robert Bruce Montgomery, composer and writer, who wrote detective stories under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin, and musical scores including for the early films in the Carry On series. To celebrate, I read The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944), the first book to feature Crispin’s detective, Oxford don Gervase Fen. This was my first time reading the book, though I have read a couple of others in the series before. This was a humorous book full of literary allusions and references, but also a nice juicy mystery at its heart.

The Case of the Gilded Fly opens with the last leg of a train journey to Oxford on which are 11 different characters central to our mystery. Among them are Gervase Fen who is a professor of English Language and Literature who also is an amateur detective with several cases to his credit and Chief Constable Sir Richard Freeman, his friend, who has an interest in literary criticism. The other 9 are various characters connected in some way with the repertory theatre at Oxford, some who work there and others headed down to perform a play, while a third group is connected with the others in different ways. We have Robert Warner, the writer/director of ‘Metromania’, his girlfriend and lead in the play, Rachel West; actresses and step sisters Yseut and Helen Haskell—the former is detested by nearly everyone; producer Sheila McGaw; musician/organist Donald Fellowes, and young student Jean Whitelegge who is a student, secretary of the Oxford University Theatre Club and also works as a prop girl at the repertory; Nicholas Barclay, who spews Shakespeare and is interested in Donald’s musical talents; and finally journalist and Fen’s former student Nigel Blake. I must say the introduction of this whole cast of characters at once did create some confusion for me at the start for I found it a little hard to keep straight in my mind who was who and the relationships between the lot, but a little more into the story this was resolved.

Yseut who is pretty but spiteful and involved with more than one of the company, seems to enjoy stirring up trouble, using every opportunity--whether at drinks, during rehearsals or a party thrown by an artillery officer on leave (Peter Graham)—to get people’s hackles up. So, it isn’t much of a surprise when she turns up dead. She is found shot just some distance away from Fen’s rooms, and at a time when more than one of those who had a grudge against her is on the premises. All the evidence seems to point to suicide, and the police are inclined to think so as well. However, Fen is convinced that this was murder and sets out to prove it. But with almost everyone connected with her openly relieved at her death, and most of them also with motives to do away with her, is Fen able to identify the right person?

This was a really enjoyable first book in the series, in which I not only liked the mystery but also loved the writing and even more so, the humour. The book is full of literary allusions and references and I’m sure I didn’t catch on to them all; there were some I knew were references but not quite where they came from (there were also plenty of references to music as well, one key to the plot, also reflecting Crispin’s background). My favourites though were the Alice ones, with Fen on one occasion exclaiming ‘oh dear, oh dear, I shall be too late’ like the White Rabbit, ‘waking up like the Dormouse’ on another, and on a third, crying out, ‘oh my ears and whiskers’ also echoing the rabbit!

The writing is also full of humour all through, which I enjoyed (including when poor Mrs Fen, ‘Dolly’—whom I met for the first time since she hadn’t appeared in the two other books I read—commits ‘suicide’ when asked so that Fen can figure out how the body would have fallen). I particularly enjoyed all the instances where Fen breaks ‘the fourth wall’ (something Karen has written about in her wonderful post celebrating Crispin earlier this week here: https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/3691...), with Fen and other characters acknowledging that they are merely characters in a detective story. So, we have Fen saying,

I’m the only literary critic turned detective in the whole of fiction.

On another occasion when he begins to speak about things having to be put into camouflage in a detective novel, Sir Richard has this to say:

Really, Gervase. If there’s anything I profoundly dislike, it is the sort of detective story in which one of the characters propounds views on how detective stories should be written…

Fen, like many fictional detectives, knows whodunit almost immediately but refuses to reveal his suspicions, only for Sir Richard to remark with a groan:

Oh Lord!…Mystification again. I know: it can’t come out till the last chapter.

There are many others throughout the book, and all of them great fun.

The book was published in 1944 towards the end of the war and while the war isn’t central to the story, it is very much present for instance, in Peter Graham, the artillery Captain whom the company meets at Oxford, to the state of things at Fen’s college (younger students and such), the black out and Nicholas having been invalided after Dunkirk.

But amidst all this fun and Fen’s droll observations (and of course, the more sombre shadows of the war), we also have a proper mystery at the core. Yseut Haskell has been murdered, and Fen is working out the solution; well, not quite since he says he knows it right from the start, it is more the how and the requisite evidence he is working on. With so many suspects all of whom had motives, and not a single one with a particularly solid alibi, I wasn’t sure which of them it could be. So, there was a surprise in the who, how and why. Nigel Blake serves as a kind of Watson here, with Fen giving him the facts and asking him to work it out for himself. Fen also has to work through the moral dilemma of whether he should indeed give the murderer up, though ultimately an incident that occurs decides him.

This was a lovely read for me, and I look forward to reading more of Crispin’s books and his wonderful writing!

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been a Crispin fan, in a subliminal sort of way, for years. I read several – probably picked up at library sales – and quietly reveled in the sharp wit and erudition. And then kind of forgot about them; Crispin has been on my List for a long time, but I've never bestirred myself to finish my collection. So I was tickled when this first book in the series – which I'd never picked up before – became the book-of-the-month at the revived Goodreads English Mysteries Group.

It's been a long time since I've read a Gervase Fen mystery. And now I'm going to have to go back and read the others again, because I want to know if I still like them. I'm none too sure I really liked this one.

Great line: "Thank you, Miss Whitelegge. You've been involuntarily informative to a high degree."

The sharp wit was very much in evidence – so sharp it drew blood in a few places. The erudition was very much there – the sort of careless sophistication that tosses off literary reference and foreign language commentary without explanation or translation, as a reminder that either general education was much more thorough in England in the first half of the 20th century … or that Edmund Crispin's education was ever so much better. Or simply that mine wasn't. This culminated in an extraordinarily frustrating reference-drop in the very last chapter; without spoilers, the provenance of a major component of the murder scene, left almost completely unexplained up to that point, is questioned, and Fen tosses off "I believe it was in Act IV, scene iv." He mentions Shakespeare. Which play? You mean you don't know? Tut tut. (A kind friend clued me in before I had to go Goodsearch: It's King Lear.)

The tone of the book is almost painfully modern (or is it postmodern?). I'm fairly sure other writers were still tap dancing around extra-marital love affairs to some degree, unless of course I'm mentally whitewashing. Not Crispin. His characters make statements about their love lives and wait for audience reaction. The play at the heart of the book is terribly, terribly modern; the sexual mores are modern; the attitudes – well, you get the idea. If there had been any paintings discussed in the book they would have been either all sharp and ugly angles, or Pollocks, all filled with the deepest meaning or aggressively without meaning. At the same time, the deep roots of Oxford are well utilized, dim old rooms and history clinging in the stairwells and organ loft – but it's very clear that the world is changing. This could be down to the War: blackout must be observed (and there is a really wonderful quick moment when an exception is made), and there are a few other glances toward the Blitz and the front, but on the whole I found it easy to forget this was supposed to be taking place some five years into Britain's war effort.

Something I kept finding in looking up Edmund Crispin was the constant refrain of how much Gervase Fen owes to Lord Peter Wimsey. So I found this quote utterly remarkable:

Fen: "But don't you see, whatever I do, I shall have it on my conscience till I reach the grave."
Mrs. Fen: "Nonsense, Gervase, you're exaggerating. Either way, you'll have forgotten completely about it in three months. Anyway, a detective with a conscience is ludicrous. If you're going to make all this fuss about it afterwards, you shouldn't interfere in these things at all."

Well. Well, well, well. So … was this a snark from Crispin directly at Lord Peter? It can't but be so. This was originally published in 1944, after the bulk (if not all) of the Lord Peter material had been released. There's no doubt Crispin knew Lord Peter – if nothing else, Fen bears a striking resemblance to what would result if Peter were stuck in a blender with Holmes and the archetypal absent-minded professor and gently pulsed. Interesting that the words are put into the mouth of Dolly Fen, who struck me as a kind of wonderful character. She is the only possible wife for the flighty, forgetful, distractible Fen, calm and steady and with a great sense of humor ("Shall I pull the trigger?" I loved that); it's a little surreal that this helpmeet, whom I really liked, should administer a smack-down on one of my favorite fictional human beings.

Crispin had to have known Sayers – and he also knew John Dickson Carr:

"Oh my fur and whiskers! ... Heaven grant Gideon Fell never becomes privy to my lunacy; I should never hear the end of it." -- Gervase Fen (whose name, I think perhaps, owes something to the latter gentleman.)

I loved the ghost story old Wilkes told – loved it to pieces, until the end, which didn't quite make sense. A boy was killed by a group of men who hunted him down and beat him to death. Some four or five hundred years later a boy is chased by something unseen – all broken bones and teeth – and winds up beaten to death himself. But the elements didn't seem to come together; was the ghost the hunted boy or the pack that hunted him, or was one part of the story and the other the one which did the murder? If it fit a little bit too perfectly into the setting (and suddenly a shot rang out!), it was forgivably theatrical.

There was a great deal to enjoy about The Gilded Fly. Was this a brilliantly written book? Absolutely. Was it a good murder mystery? Absolutely. Was the stuff in there about theatre and Oxford in 1944 wonderful? Absolutely. Did I love the self-aware reference to Gideon Fell (and, in a sort of way, to Lord Peter)? Absolutely. Was the snapshot of Oxford in wartime terrific? Absolutely. Was the entire bracketing sequence about the trains into Oxford funny and excellent? Absolutely. Was all of this completely undermined and overshadowed (both!) by the snarky Lord-I'm-so-much-cleverer-than-you-could-ever-dream-of-being attitude of the Great Detective and, apparently, his creator? Absolutely.

[Helga · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have seen phantoms there that were as men,
And men that were as phantoms flit and roam.
-James Thomson

A locked-room mystery with the usual detested murder victim, the usual suspects with alibis and the usual motives for murder.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘El misterio de la mosca dorada’ (The Case of the Gilded Fly, 1944), del inglés Edmund Crispin, pseudónimo de Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978), pertenece a la Edad de Oro de las novelas de detectives. Como es habitual, Crispin integra a la perfección el humor británico con un misterio por resolver. Pero Crispin fue más allá en lo que eran las historias de detectives, el juego intelectual de plantear un misterio, ya que sus tramas están plagadas de suculentas citas literarias y de alusiones a obras clásicas de la literatura británica.

El protagonista principal de las novelas de Edmund Crispin es Gervase Fen, profesor de Literatura Inglesa, que ejerce en Oxford, más concreto en el ficticio St. Christopher’s College. Gervase, detective aficionado, es tan excéntrico y como brillante, para desesperación de sus allegados.

‘El misterio de la mosca dorada’ es la primera novela donde aparece Gervase Fen. La historia está ambientada en Oxford, y los hechos centrales se mueven en torno a una obra de teatro que se va a representar en esta ciudad. Los primeros capítulos tratan sobre los dimes y diretes de los diferentes actores, director y amigos de estos, incluido Gervase Fen y Nigel Blake, siendo este último a través del que iremos conociendo la mayor parte de los hechos. Los celos y las rivalidades se suceden, estando en el centro de todo ello la maliciosa Yseut Haskell, actriz en ciernes. Y es que Yseut se convierte en un dolor de cabeza para todo el mundo. Al poco, aparece muerta, en lo que es un asesinato que quiere hacerse pasar por suicidio. La inquina y el odio que le procesaban sus compañeros, los convertirá a todos en sospechosos.

La novelas de Edmund Crispin son deliciosas, y ya estoy esperando con ansia una nueva traducción de otro de sus libros.

[Richard Derus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rating: 2.5* of five

The Book Description: Theater companies are notorious hotbeds of intrigue, and few are more intriguing than the company currently in residence at Oxford University. Center-stage is the beautiful, malicious Yseult, a mediocre actress with a stellar talent for destroying men. Rounding out the cast are more than a few of her past and present conquests, and the women who love them. And watching from the wings is Professor Gervase Fen--scholar, wit, and fop extraordinaire--who would infinitely rather solve crimes than expound on English literature. When Yseult is murdered, Fen finally gets his wish. Though clear kin to Lord Peter Wimsey, Fen is a spectacular original--brilliant, eccentric and rude, much taken with himself and his splendid yellow raincoat, and given to quoting Lewis Carroll at inappropriate occasions. Gilded Fly, originally published in 1944, was both Fen's first outing and the debut of the pseudonymous Crispin (in reality, composer Bruce Montgomery), whom the New York Times once called the heir to John Dickson Carr . . . and Groucho Marx.

My Review: Tedious, fusty, and supercilious.

Well, that about sums that up.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where I got the book: purchased used through Amazon. Absolutely marvelous dreadful cover.

Having had a few days to allow this murder mystery to percolate through my brain, I have come to the conclusion that the whole thing is a novel-length p*ss-take of the genre and that the author was laughing up his sleeve at the reader the whole time. Set in Oxford during World War II, the story revolves around a repertory theater group who are putting on--from scratch in one week--a play by a brilliant playwright who is also involved in the production. Bitchy actress Yseut makes trouble for everyone and practices her seductive wiles on as many men as possible, and gets her comeuppance via a bullet hole in the head. Is the ring on her finger (a gilded fly) a clue?

We are introduced to the amateur detective Gervase Fen, a professor and literary critic who works out the crime in three minutes and spends the rest of the book dropping hints about how he knows what went on but he's not going to tell anyone until they've worked it out for themselves, neener neener neener. This, of course, allows time for another murder to take place, so Fen is in fact responsible for a death. In the meantime, the rest of the cast and crew get on with the show that must go on, nobody really caring a rat's *ss about the murder victim because she was a beyotch and a ho anyway. Which demonstrates that the author knew a lot about actors.

Fen makes me think of the lead character in the brilliant BBC Sherlock, so irritating he's fascinating (I think the original Sherlock was supposed to be that way, but time has hallowed him). The supporting cast is fairly unmemorable, except for Mrs. Fen whom I adore utterly. The "official" detective--whose passion is for literary criticism--is an absolutely brilliant idea, but he's not rounded out well enough for me.

Yep, I honestly think that everything I found annoying about this book was put there on purpose to annoy. I think Crispin was having his bit o' fun with us stupid readers. When he makes Fen say, mid-book, "In fact I'm the only literary critic turned detective in the whole of fiction", I think he's showing us right there that his intention is to subvert the murder mystery genre rather than add to it.

The writing, on the other hand, was superb and often very funny. Crispin displays very little sympathy for the world he describes and the people in it; he's laughing AT everyone, I swear.

This book may get a re-read just because. In the meanwhile, my feelings about a rating hover between a 3 (for being bloody annoying) and a 5 (for being a bloody good writer). Let's just call it a 4 and have done with it.

[Sub_zero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cabría suponer que a estas alturas del partido, poco o nada nuevo hay que añadir sobre las características que hacen del escritor británico uno de los autores más excepcionales que podemos encontrar dentro del género al que se adscriben sus novelas, pero lo cierto es que la extravagante fórmula ideada por Crispin, que supone combinar una erudición literaria muy próxima a la pedantería con los vertiginosos trasiegos detectivescos que hacían de estas historias un exitoso entretenimiento popular, continúa siendo hoy día fuente inagotable de momentos que revitalizan nuestra percepción sobre las historias de misterio. Así pues, gracias a las agudas observaciones de Gervase Fen, la constante incertidumbre que se cierne sobre las páginas de la novela, el estilo pulcro, exquisito y siempre aliñado con una nota de humor corrosivo del que hace gala Edmund Crispin o el aluvión de referencias intertextuales que se encuentran salpicadas por el libro, la lectura de El misterio de la mosca dorada se convierte en un auténtico deleite que estimula la sensibilidad literaria de los lectores más exigentes y permite a otros más conformistas disfrutar plenamente de una obra que no por ser accesible resulta menos sobresaliente.

[Julio Bernad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Siguiendo la estela de detectives británicos poco ortodoxos, como el padre Brown de Chesterton, la novela de Crispin opta por mostrarnos unos personajes interesantes, excéntricos y divertidos antes que un caso intrincado y sesudo que ponga a prueba nuestras capacidades deductivas. Sin embargo, que el misterio que rodea al caso no sea complicado u original no significa que no nos intrigue; Crispin sabe cómo enganchar y conducir a uno por cada interrogatorio deseando que lleguen los siguientes: una pena que luego el desenlace no este a la altura de las pesquisas.

Lo que sí borda Crispin, que es el motivo por el cual seguiré leyendo las desventuras de Gervase Fen, el profesor-detective histérico y neurótico, son los diálogos: ¡qué maravilla de conversaciones! La cantidad de juegos de palabras que hay y citas a la alta literatura inglesa - que uno se perdería si no fuera por los pies de pagina de la edición de Impedimenta- hacen que esta novela, e imagino que toda la serie, se encuentre en un limbo entre la novela de detectives y la comedia intelectual. Hay conversaciones que son de las que no se olvidan, ataques y puyas tan sofisticadas que solo pueden hacerse antes de ajustarse el monóculo y que demuestran, una vez más, que el insulto inteligente ofende dos veces, en tanto que insulto y por la capacidad del insultado para captarlo.

El señor Crispin debía de ser un hombre bastante peculiar en su época. Solo por su mala uva y sentido del humor recomiendo su lectura.

[Ana Cristina Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

El misterio de la mosca dorada no podría ser más british ni aunque viniera empaquetado con fish and chips. Palabras del The New York Sun, que son una buena definición de este policial, un clásico whodunnit para pasar un rato estupendo.

El protagonista y detective ocasional es el excéntrico Gervase Fen, profesor de literatura inglesa en Oxford, que en esta historia tiene que encontrar al asesino de una joven actriz, la cual no gozaba de muchas simpatías en su pequeña compañía de teatro.

La atmósfera se disfruta y el personaje principal es muy divertido. Hay quien la compara desfavorablemente con La juguetería errante: Un misterio para Gervase Fen, del mismo autor, pero en cualquier caso es una novela policial clásica que tiene muchos atractivos y originalidad.

[Abigail Bok · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Case of the Gilded Fly is the first of “Edmund Crispin’s” (Bruce Montgomery’s) Gervase Fen novels, written when he was quite young. It has all the virtues and flaws of youth—exuberant energy, confidence, overreach.

The tale begins with a number of people traveling on the train from London to Oxford, where a playwright is going to stage his newest play. Many are the labyrinthine connections among the characters laid out at the opening—the sheer number and complexity of their intersections was pretty bewildering, made more so by similarities in some of the names. It took me a while to sort everyone out, and a few remained fuzzy in my mind to the last. The histories of tension between some of the characters lead to a tangle of motives, and there’s a lot of that sort of half-baked romance characteristic of so much British light fiction from earlier eras. Set during World War II but published in the 1950s, there is a Mad Men flavor to the relations between the sexes. All the females appear to want nothing more than to marry whichever rotter is closest to them; all the men want to sit around drinking with one another.

Sounds like I didn’t enjoy it, right? To the contrary, I loved every retro, outrageous page. Fen, an Oxford literature don with a talent for detecting, is one of the most lively, unpredictable amateur sleuths I have ever read. He’s a true original who keeps you simultaneously chuckling and on your toes. I’m a sucker for an academic setting and enjoy trailing gamely along in the wake of the witty and erudite dialogue. The narration is equally brisk and pithy, and I like the undercurrent of ethical rigor that deepens a genre often too blasé about violent death. I also have a soft spot for any author who can introduce me to new vocabulary, and I shall treasure aposiopesis and apolaustic.

The ending was a bit stagey and melodramatic—but after all, the author was still more or less a stripling. What a talent.

[Dannii Elle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This classic crime delivered all of the murderous puzzling and socially political scheming that I had anticipated, and was as an intriguing and engaging read because of it. The artistic individuals that littered the text also added to my interest, as did the academic Oxford setting.

I did, however, find the actual crime to be less convoluted than I had early on anticipated and I guessed at many of the narrative twists prior to their unveiling in the story-line. I also found the lead detective for this series, Gervase Fen, a bit of a bore and the likes of Miss Marple of Poirot are certainly in no fear of him usurping their place at the pinnacle of the classic crime hierarchy.

[Toby · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the joys of The Moving Toyshop I felt it was only fair to start at the beginning of the Gervase Fen sequence. Little did I know that it was not the most exciting of adventures however.

A locked room mystery set backstage of the current Oxford University company in residence whose just so happen to be more than passing acquaintances with resident amateur sleuth and professional English literature lecturer, Gervase Fen.

Aside from the excellent prologue (which felt almost as if it had been tacked on after the novel was finished) and the ingenious resolution of the locked room style mystery there isn't a whole lot going for this book.

There are so many characters with similar names and such a convoluted plot that if you're not careful everything will get scrambled in your mind and most importantly there's very little of the wit, playfulness and general absurdity of Gervase Fen that I had expected after my initial introduction to him.

I can't say I recommend this one to anyone who doesn't appreciate a good locked room mystery and certainly not a good introduction to Crispin as an author.

[Leonie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately the misogyny in this was really repulsive. The murder victim, an unpopular actress, is killed because she's a bitch and a slut, and there's a lot of vitriol aimed at her. Before she's killed, someone says "Someone's going to kill or mutilate that girl someday, and I for one shan't be sorry" and afterwards everyone angsts about how no one should hang for her. We keep getting told about how she died because of sex and it turns out she was ultimately killed because she blackmailed someone about procuring prostitutes, and the detective, who's very sad about the murderer's downfall, says these girls are more sinning than sinned against. I found it all very distasteful. Added to that, the writing is too self-conscious, and commits that hideous detective story sin of using "Character mentioned (blank) person or thing", which is just shamefully unsporting and silly. This is the first in a series I've read several of and actually liked, finding them well-written, irreverent and fun. If you're thinking about trying this series, don't start with this one.

[Simona B · Rating 2 out of 5]

"From beginning to end... the whole thing has been an incompetent muddle, in which the hand of the author has been painfully obvious."

I do like that Crispin was aware he was writing a "farce" (in a good sense), as the back of my edition correctly recites. I don't even mind that his hand was so visible. And I can even forgive his outright disparaging attitude towards women (I don't set out to read a 1940s detective novel expecting it to reflect progressive, or in some cases even barely decent, views.) But my problem is simply this: "It hasn't been a battle of wits, it's been a walk-over."

I am grateful to this book, however, for providing one of the best insults I've heard to date. "You are... without exception the most imbecile, ignominious cretinous poltroon it has ever been my evil fortune to meet. What is worse, you become more imbecile, ignominious, cretinous and poltroonish with every hour that passes."

[Libros Prestados · Rating 4 out of 5]

Videoreseña del libro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e1ez...

Un misterio "quién lo hizo" británico de manual. De hecho, sigue tan al pie de la letra las reglas del género, que los propios personajes bromean con ello, ya que ellos mismos saben que están dentro de una historia de detectives.

Segunda historia del detective Gervaise Fen escrita por Edmund Crispin que leo, pero primera en la cronología del personaje. Me ha gustado mucho, pero menos que "La juguetería errante". Opino que "La juguetería errante" es más original, o al menos el escritor ya había encontrado cierto tono propio y la novela tiende más a la comedia y a utilizar un humor loco del tipo de los hermanos Marx o la "screwball comedy" que a resolver el misterio, si bien es un clásico enigma de "habitación cerrada".

"El misterio de la mosca dorada" en cambio es mucho más una historia detectivesca, la resolución del misterio tiene mucho más peso en la novela. Diríamos que es más Agatha Christie, pero más ingenioso, con referencias literarias mucho más profusas y oscuras, y un sentido del humor mucho más acusado. Los personajes también tienden a ser bastante más extravagantes, con el detective protagonista, el profesor de Literatura Inglesa de Oxford Gervaise Fen, al frente. Por cierto, me ha sorprendido descubrir en esta novela que Fen está casado ¡y tiene hijos!

El enigma y su resolución siguen los patrones de este tipo de historias (y los personajes se burlan mucho de este hecho) y aunque hay punto en los que Edmund Crispin es un poco tramposo y escamotea información, lo cierto es que si se presta atención puede uno formarse una teoría de cómo sucedió todo. De todas formas, y aunque el misterio es importante y está muy bien estructurado, lo que hace a la novela realmente entretenida son sus personajes y el sentido del humor que destila, puro humor fino inglés.

Aquellos a quienes les gustan las novelas de detectives clásicas, los "quién lo hizo" de toda la vida" y el humor inglés, disfrutarán como niños con "El misterio de la mosca dorada".

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This spring I read Death Of A Hollow Man which was a mystery involving a theater group. I was most certainly hoping this one wasn't similar - my hopes were not dashed. Although all of the many many characters are somehow connected with a production by a repertory group, there was little enough about the play itself.

In the other, there was one despicable character that I hoped would be the victim and I had to wait for any murder at all. I didn't have to wait long in this one for the most despised character to be found dead. She was despised by nearly everyone. While there were plenty of suspects, it appeared that few had opportunity. Still, I didn't solve it. The mystery is good enough, but not spectacular. As doesn't seem routine for mysteries, it was the writing style and characterizations that carried this for me, and the solution of who-done-it was sort of an anti-climax.

I absolutely loved the writing style. It has interesting sentence structure and vocabulary without being so complex that I'd get lost along the way. There were ye olde English literary references that I failed to understand entirely, but it seems they were there only to give flesh to the series character Gervase Fen, who is an Oxford professor of English. Having read just this one, I can't say that the series should be read in order, but I'm betting not. Still, I'm glad to have this first in the series first as I don't know how much of Fen's character will be spelled out in subsequent installments.

I'd like to give this 4-stars because I know I'll want to read more of Crispin. But I simply can't rate this more than a good and solid 3-stars.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first novel in the Gervase Fen series and the first of Crispin's novels which I've read, this was the August 2012 group read for the English Mysteries Book Club. Gervase Fen, an Oxford don and gifted amateur detective, solves the murder of an actress apparently hated by all who knew her.

This review, written by my friend Jane and this one written by my friend Tracey, leave me little to say about the novel. Jane and Tracey (as usual) do a great job with their analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the work.

I’ll content myself with listing the things I most like and dislike about the novel. First, the things I like:

• The WWII Oxford setting;

• The stylish prose (possibly a bit pretentious, with its liberal sprinkling of Latin quotations and literary allusions, but I’m a sucker for that sort of thing);

• The post-modern, self-referential touches;

• The theatre theme;

• The juxtaposition of the lecturer in literature who loves detecting crime and the policeman whose hobby is literary criticism;

• Gervase Fen’s put-upon but wonderfully snarky wife.

Now for the things I dislike:

• The confusing cast of characters who were difficult to distinguish one from the other.

• The incredibly annoying Fen. I accept that he’s supposed to be annoying, but I kept hoping that something about his eccentricity would become endearing. It didn’t.

• The relentless misogyny of the text. For me, this went beyond the difference between language and attitudes which were acceptable in the 1940s but are not acceptable today. According to the narrative, the victim, a sexually promiscuous and deeply unpleasant young woman, deserved to be murdered. In fact, the murderer did the world a favour by disposing of her and Gervase Fen spends a lot of time asking himself and other characters whether apprehending and punishing the murderer would be just. I’d like to think that this was, as my friend Jane believes, the author playing with his readers, but I’m concerned that it was meant seriously. While I’ve become accustomed to the casual anti-Semitism and racism which is prevalent in pre-WWII British crime fiction, I’ve not encountered such obvious sexism before in this kind of novel. It may just be that I’m used to reading female mystery writers of the period – such as Sayers and Tey – who dealt with gender issues in quite a different way.

Overall, in my mind the negatives of this novel outweigh the positives. My reading of other reviews of Crispin’s work suggests that this is not the best of the Gervase Fen series, so I may read another at some point. But I won’t be in any great hurry to do so.

Rounded up to three stars because of the great setting, the excellent prose and Mrs Fen.

[Leah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A new play is in rehearsal at the repertory theatre in Oxford. Robert Warner, already a highly respected playwright, has decided to try out his latest work outside London first. Last year, Robert had a brief fling with Yseut Haskell, which makes things awkward since Yseut is now in the rep company. This isn’t the only awkwardness among the company, though – there’s a whole bunch of rivalries, jealousies and hurt feelings going on, and it seems Yseut is the root cause of most of them. Even her half-sister Helen finds her insufferable. So when Yseut is found shot dead in a college bedroom halfway through the rehearsal week, there’s not exactly an outpouring of grief. The police think it’s suicide and everyone is eager to accept that, but Gervase Fen knows straight away that it was murder and very soon he also claims to know who did it. The question is, should he interfere or let the murderer get away with it – after all, Yseut is no great loss…

This is the first in the Gervase Fen series and, while it has many of the features that make the middle books such fun, it also has some flaws. Several people had remarked to me in advance that they didn’t like the way women are treated in this one, and I must agree, although I don’t think the men come off much better. The prevailing belief that Yseut deserved her fate seems largely to be because she used her womanly wiles to seduce poor unsuspecting men against their will, breaking the hearts of various other women who, for reasons that escaped me, seemed to find these sad saps attractive. All seem in agreement that the world – the tiny little world of academic and artistic privilege they inhabit – is a better place without her. Then there’s the question of talent and genius – since all the suspects may be said to have one or other of those gifts, do we really want one of them to be hanged over something as trivial as murdering this annoying woman?

In the middle books in the series, Crispin is much better at satirising all this intellectual and artistic arrogance, but in this one the satire doesn’t quite land, and so it feels as if the reader is supposed to take seriously these arguments in favour of justifying murder, and that’s jarring. Yseut may not have been the nicest person in the world, but is that a good enough reason to kill her? I can’t help thinking that murderers might not be terribly nice people either, even if they can act, or write plays, or play music, or design stage sets. Even their marvellous collective ability to quote ad lib from everything from King Lear to Alice in Wonderland didn’t make me feel they should be immune to the normal rules of society.

There’s lots of good stuff in it too though. The writing is great and the usual humour is there, as is Crispin’s willingness to break the fourth wall with gleeful abandon. Fen mentions that he’s “the only literary critic turned detective in the whole of fiction”, while Sir Richard, Fen’s friend and Chief Constable of Oxford, bemoans the fact that the solution won’t be revealed until the last chapter. I enjoyed Fen’s mention of his friend Gideon Fell – John Dickson Carr’s detective. I found most of the characters rather unlikeable, but they’re not unenjoyable – plenty of sarcasm and bickering, which adds to the fun.

The plot is mostly a howdunit, and the method is certainly imaginative even if I can’t say I found it at all believable. The motive seems tacked on as an afterthought, as if Crispin had realised at the last minute that he had to give the murderer a reason to have committed the crime. There were parts that sent my credulometer into overdrive, but Fen’s method is always a mix of brilliant deduction, intuition and wild leaps of imagination, so logic and plausibility are never the foremost features of these books.

However, there was another mystery that I found even more baffling than the murder. I was gobsmacked to learn that Gervase Fen has a wife, with the unlikely name of Dolly, and more than one child (number not specified)! What happened to them between this and the later books where they don’t exist? Were they abducted by aliens? Did Fen use his prodigious talents as an amateur criminologist to carry out the perfect mass murder? Or did he, in one of his White Rabbit moments, simply put them somewhere and then forget where he’d left them?

Despite the issues I’ve mentioned above, overall I find the humour in these books goes a long way towards compensating for any weaknesses. While this one isn’t up to the standard of the best in the series, I still found it an enjoyable way to spend a few hours, and Fen comfortably maintains his place as one of my favourite vintage detectives.

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[The Cruciverbalistic Bookworm]

3.5⭐
My first Gervase Fen book. Good prose but too many literary references, quotes and arcane words make this somewhat unsatisfying mystery sound pretentious. Though its Golden-Age style, a don-turned-detective always spouting literary greats was a bit too much.

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's 1940, and a war is going on, but Gervase Fen is somehow still annoying everybody in Oxford.

A noted playwright is developing a play. One of the actresses is a complete pain in the butt. As usual in such things, she is quickly murdered. Fen doesn't care so much, as he feels like she probably had it coming, but when a second murder occurs, katy bar the door!

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The resonance of The Pickwick Papers remains in its transgressions of form and style; it is a comic novel punctuated with ghost stories and finding its finest footing in a debtor's prison. Edmund Crispin achieves a similar success; this is a droll portrait of theatre folk during wartime; one which doesn't flinch nor shirk from low humor or dazzling erudition. I laughed freely and marveled at the elocution. I'm nerdy like that. People around here appear to lack that eloquence.

The actual details of the crime to be solved were flighty and improbable. What if a locked room wasn't actually a room? That isn't a spoiler , but a nod to with weird wit at the core of the denouement. Another detail to savor is the amount of beer consumed before lunch in a rationed Oxford. Whither austerity?

[Tara · Rating 3 out of 5]

A somewhat middling book that I ended up neither liking nor disliking. Having read quite a few Golden Age mysteries, nothing really stood out to me as fantastic--the characters were rather bland and forgettable, the policemen were non-entities, and the amateur detective was pompous ala Hercule Poirot, but did not seem to live up to his standards. But despite all of those deficiencies, it was a breezy read, and I did like the narrator of the story, Nigel Blake. I am not sure whether or not I want to bother with another book in the Fen series, but this wasn't a total waste of time.