The Moving Toyshop

Gervase Fen #3

by Edmund Crispin

Richard Cadogan's Oxford holiday turns into a mystery solving adventure full of dangerous twists and unexpected turns.

After an eventful train journey, Cadogan arrives in Oxford late at night only to realise that he has forgotten the exact address of his stay. Relying on a distant memory of the place he boarded in years ago he accidentally enters a toyshop where, to his surprise and fright, he finds the dead body of a woman. Knocked out and locked in the store room, Cadogan emerges to find that the body is gone and the toyshop has turned inexplicably into a grocery shop. Luckily for the puzzled poet his old university friend Gervase Fen is there, ready to plunge into the midst of this mystery.

The Moving Toyshop is Edmund Crispin's most famous novel featuring eccentric amateur detective, Gervase Fen.

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

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1946

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

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like vintage British mysteries and vintage British silliness, The Moving Toyshop (1946) is a book for you. Like most vintage mysteries, it is cleverly plotted, yet the puzzle at the core of Toyshop is ridiculous, its dialogue (though witty and funny) improbable, and its resolution absurd. But if you enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Saki's short stories, and P.G. Wodehouse's tales of Jeeves and Wooster, you will find this book a delight.

The premise is intriguing. Poet Richard Cadogan goes on holiday to Oxford, his alma mater. While taking a late night walk into the city, he passes a toyshop with its door ajar and decides to take a look around. He finds a corpse (of course!), and, after excitedly informing the police of his discovery, he leads them to the scene of the crime. There he meets with an even more disturbing surprise: not only is no corpse to be found within the building, but the building itself is no longer a toyshop. It has transformed itself into a grocery instead.

Cadogan seeks out eccentric Oxford Don Gervase Fen, amateur detective and professor of English, and together they set out to solve the “mystery of the moving toyshop.” Since the two main characters are a poet and an English professor, the dialogue is studded with wit (“this is a book everyone can afford to be without”), obscure allusions (“Empedocles on Etna”), and literary games (“Unreadable Books”). All this, however, gives the reader much pleasure. There is a smile on almost every page, and more than an occasional laugh.

I thought the solution too labored and the climax too frenetic—more Pythonesque than Wildean, I'm afraid. Still, although the imperturbable mask of British farce may be knocked askew by the ending, the prose remains elegant and the tone good-humored throughout this unique—and essential--comic mystery.

[Lisa of Troy · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Surely I did not hear you speaking disrespectfully of the immortal Jane?”

There has been a murder in Oxford! Never fear because a poet (Richard Cadogan) and a professor of English Language and Literature (Gervase Fen) are on the case!

In The Moving Toyshop, the characters carried the day. Although published in 1946, the literary games and discussion have stood the test of time. For example, while at the pub, two characters debate the merits of Jane Austen. There is also another game called Detestable Characters in Fiction.

On the other hand, the depiction of women is appalling, and the plot is very convoluted. The women were almost exclusively described by their appearance: beautiful, fat, her face was fat, fat legs. Even Phyllis Hume, the love of Cadogan’s life, is described as “dark with large eyes, and a superb figure.”

The murder plot is overly complex, and the ending seemed to go on for ages. Also, you must suspend reality while reading this book because clues just fall into the dynamic duo’s lap. Literally, one character said we need to find so-and-so, and the mystery person just so happened to hear her name and announce herself.

At one point, the book mentioned literary parties. Where are these and how can I get invited to one?

In conclusion, if you enjoy literary commentary, the characters are phenomenal, and you will want to spend time with them.

‘What shall I say, sir’ said Parsons, ‘if they come again?’ ‘Give them a drink of beer and pack them off with specious, high-sounding promises.’

As a murder mystery, this isn’t the best example.

How much I spent:
Electronic Text - $6.80 through Amazon

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[Paromjit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a golden era classic comic crime novel set in 1938 Oxford from the series featuring Gervase Fen, an Oxford professor, who has a penchant for investigating the strange and the odd. This is the third and I have to say that I loved it. Poet Richard Cadogan is on vacation in Oxford, and is walking around at night when he spots a toy shop with an open door. His curiousity overwhelms him, and he finds himself going into the toy shop. And would you believe it, he spies the dead body of a murdered woman. He returns in the morning with the police, and there is a slight problem. There is now no toy shop and no dead body. Instead, in its place is a grocery shop.

A perplexed Richard calls on our amateur detective, Gervase Fen, and the two of them start pulling at the threads of this bizarre mystery. They riff really well off each other, and their relationship with each other is a joy to behold. They find themselves travelling all round the city, encountering weird rich women, a lawyer to beware of, legacies, and, of course, have a maiden to protect. There is plenty of humour throughout the novel. The writing is wonderful and there are literary quotations and word play scattered throughout. It is artfully plotted, more than a trifle bonkers and a great deal of fun. It might also improve your vocabulary! Providing you are not looking for logic, this is a delightful classic crime read. Recommended. Thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some people in the 17th and 18th century had extraordinary careers, they would discover tobacco and then invent toast and then become Keeper of the King’s Second Best Wigs whilst writing revenge tragedies as a sideline. Edmund Crispin was almost one of those. I first encountered him many years ago as the great editor of a series of SF anthologies



Nearly every story in this series was wonderful. He then threw in horror



Also much appreciated by my small self. But Edmund had actually started out as a college pal of Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis and a composer of serious church music (there isn’t much unserious church music). The hymns and requiems didn’t make the charts so he switched to film music and here is where I encountered him a second time, quite unwittingly –



It says here that he composed the film score for no less than six Carry Ons, along with a whole lot of other forgotten British B movies like Too Young to Love and Twice Round the Daffodils. I have no idea what those are like, but I notice they have not yet been included in the Criterion Collection.

So this was the third coming of Edmund Crispin for me. Naturally as well as all the above he churned out a number of detective novels of the comfy cosy variety. The Moving Toyshop is the very definition of cosy crime which is the kind of story where every bullet drills a neat hole in the back of the victim’s skull so they don’t suffer at all, and there is never any blood, except for one aesthetically placed drop on the parquet floor of the library. Not only cutesy, The Moving Toyshop is arch, with nearly as much nodding to the audience as a plastic doggy in the back of a car window. When the two gents tracking the murderer don’t know which way to take –

“Let’s go left,” Cadogan suggested. “After all, Gollancz is publishing this book.”

(Yes, Gollancz was a left wing publisher.) And –

“Murder Stalks the University,” said Fen. “The Blood on the Mortarboard. Fen Strikes Back.”
“What’s that you’re saying?” Cadogan asked in a faint, rather gurgling voice.
“My dear fellow, are you all right? I was making up titles for Crispin.”

Some readers may be eyerolling badly at this point. If so I fear this isn’t gonna be your cup of meat. It kind of wasn’t mine either. A whole lot of pep, zest, pizzaz and casual misogyny but the plot is like a crossword puzzle and there's just not enough blood and suffering.

2.5 starts rounded up purely due to personal affection for the author

[Phrynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had not previously heard of this author or his series of detective novels. This one was first published in 1946.

It is set in and around Oxford University, a place which Crispin knew well as he was an undergraduate there himself. The book is so typical of those written in this era, full of crazy characters, clever dialogue, rather slapstick humour, and oceans of alcohol and upper class superiority. All terribly British. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Gervase Fen is the perfect main character for such a book. He is a Professor of English at the University with a very casual attitude towards his actual work and a great interest in detecting. I enjoyed the way he flew though events in such a haphazard way, yet he always seemed to be at some level in control. I particularly liked the literary games he played with Richard. Oh to be that smart!

The story is quite short, fast paced and always entertaining. The mystery is mostly illogical but fun and definitely took second place to the wonderful characters and the social setting. Now I have to find myself another book from this same series. I am hooked.

[Bionic Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Moving Toyshop is a detective novel from 1946, written by “Edmund Crispin”, a pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery. It is the third in his series of nine novels about Gervase Fen, an Oxford professor of English Language and Literature who has a penchant for private sleuthing. Although it can be classed as a Golden Age novel, it is more of a witty, rather rambling adventure story, and not a straight “whodunnit”. Mystery lovers may find this frustrating, or they may delight in the “cleverness” and deliberately intellectual references. Not for nothing is this set in Oxford, featuring an Oxford don.

“In what other city … could one address to a policeman a discourse on epistemology in the witching hours of the night, and be received with neither indignation nor suspicion?”

Oxford is an unusual setting for an English Golden Age crime novel. They are more often set in country houses, or trains, or archaeological sites, and tend to focus on rounds of suspects in a restricted or even closed environment. However the city of Oxford has been used by more recent authors of the genre. For instance Colin Dexter and Michael Innes both also used Oxford as a setting for their crime novels, but they did not invoke such a strong sense of place. Having lived in Oxford for a couple of years, (actually in a road off the Iffley Road, where the toyshop of the title is located, and much of the action is set), I was regularly in the various college rooms of my friends, the dining hall, libraries, quads, as well as round the Radcliffe Camera, Magdalen Bridge and Christ Church Meadow. I particularly enjoyed recognising all the locations, and the University life in The Moving Toyshop. It felt authentic; Edmund Crispin does this very well.

The author forewarns us of the boisterous, thrilling—and slightly ridiculous—deeds which are about to unfold, with:

“the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns in England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits”.

We begin in the back garden of the famous poet, Richard Cadogan, who is very disgruntled, and fed up of the suburbs. His literary agent calls to see him, which Cadogan finds particularly tiresome. He feels pestered, and trapped by having to write some lyrics to earn his living:

“I’ve been held up for two months over a dance lyric because I can’t think of a rhyme for ‘British’… I am sick and tired of earning my living from dance lyrics.”

Here we can see an element of autobiography. Edmund Crispin is writing what he knows about. For two years, he had been an organ scholar and choirmaster in Oxford and was a published composer of vocal and choral music, under his own name, Bruce Montgomery. Later, in 1951, he was to write “An Oxford Requiem”. But what he was to become famous for was light music. He composed numerous film scores for English comedies, such as six “Carry On” films, Richard Gordon’s “Doctor …” films and so on. It must all have seemed a very long way away from Oxford’s dreaming spires. He was also the editor of a series of rather good Science Fiction anthologies (which is where I first heard of him).

So Richard Cadogan decides to escape from it all for a while, and take a break in Oxford, where he had been at university. The author is once again taking the action in his novel from real life.

Edmund Crispin had also graduated from Oxford, in 1943, having read modern languages at St. John’s College. While there he became friendly with Philip Larkin, to whom he dedicated The Moving Toyshop, and also Kingsley Amis. This is perhaps why he evokes its sense of place so well (Colin Dexter on the other hand, went to Cambridge!) Edmund Crispin had encouraged Philip Larkin to write, and the fellow poet Andrew Motion said that:

“by combining a devoted commitment to writing with a huge appetite for drinking and fooling around, he gave Larkin a model of the ways in which art could avoid pretension”.

As an aside, I did feel that The Moving Toyshop is just too knowing, and yes, pretentious in parts. But the two were on good enough terms for Edmund Crispin to add a sly dig at his friend. It occurs when Gervase Fen is in his (fictitious) college of St. Christopher’s, looking over one of his undergraduate student’s essays called “The Influence of ‘Sir Gawain’ on Arnold’s ‘Empedocles on Etna’”. He expostulates:

“Good heavens, that must be Larkin: the most indefatigable searcher out of pointless correspondences the world has ever known.”

But back to our grumpy poet, who finds himself at the far end of Oxford High Street, away from the city centre, in the middle of the night, with no place to stay. This part is quite atmospheric, and the character Richard Cadogan becomes more engaging, as he feels lifted out of his doldrums and a little nostalgic for his student days. He meanders along, past the Oxford Colleges and over the Magdalen bridge and finds himself in the Iffley Road, a mixed area of shops and houses. This whole area has a feeling of unreality, in the small hours. One shop intrigues him, as its door is slightly ajar, so he ventures in. He discovers it is a toyshop, and wanders upstairs.

Just why he did this is not explained. Is it something we would ourselves do? Aficionados of the mystery genre might take exception to this, and it has to be said that there are a fair few large coincidences in this novel. Perhaps it is in the spirit of deus ex machina; after all there are ample references to Greek mythology. Here’s one:

“They reached the opposite pavement much as Orestes, hounded by the Furies, must have staggered into Iphigenia’s grove in Tauris”

and the aforementioned “Empedocles on Etna” (a dramatic poem by Matthew Arnold, which is not always very well regarded). Edmund Crispin has a penchant for academic, or even donnish, vocabulary and obscure allusions, and makes Gervase Fen his mouthpiece.

Nevertheless, Richard Cadogan creeps upstairs in the toyshop, in the middle of the night, rather than searching for accommodation. What he finds there, you can read in various blurbs, but I won’t spoil it for you. Suffice it to say that this is a crime novel, so you can probably guess. And since Richard Cadogan is a good friend of Gervase Fen, the professor of English at St. Christopher’s and amateur detective, who better to consult?

Once Gervase Fen enters the story, the wit begins to pick up. He’s an engagingly over the top character: lanky, cheerful and ruddy with a clean shaven face and hair (which is always plastered down with water, but with stray hairs spiking from his crown). He often seems to wear an extraordinary hat, and whenever he is surprised or shocked, will quote “Alice in Wonderland”, saying “Oh my fur and whiskers!” Gervase Fen has a beloved car, called “Lily Christine III”, which he drives like a lunatic.

Edmund Crispin describes Gervase Fen as: “charming, frivolous, brilliant and badly behaved”. In some ways he is reminiscent of Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation, Sherlock Holmes. Both detectives sink into a profound gloom after a case is solved. However they differ, in that Sherlock Holmes is energised by developments in a case, whereas Gervase Fen becomes boisterous and exuberant when he is on a case but nothing important is happening. When he finds out key information, he then becomes melancholy.

Gervase Fen has a tendency to involve all those around him in ridiculous situations, as he attempts to solve the mysteries he is pursuing. Here we see that other tutors, students, and even the police, are all given their roles, and directed in various ways by the charismatic puppet master Gervase Fen. He may ostensibly be assisting the police with their investigations, but one or two often seem to defer to him.

There are a lot of set pieces in the book, all neatly divided by chapters into “The Episode of …”. Certainly we do sometimes seem to lose the mystery in a rambling and chaotic adventure story, but if you find the two leads (and the obligatory pretty young woman, Sally Carstairs) appealing, these are entertaining enough. Some may even make you laugh out loud, such as Richard Cadogan’s pathetic attempt at choral singing. There is little actual detection in this book, and mostly the truth is revealed by a sequence of happy coincidences. From the point Sally Carstairs enters the plot it is essentially a series of chase scenes and thriller scenarios, even including the corny idea that someone is killed just as they are about to reveal the plan.

The locations are interesting though, and it even has one humorous scene at “Parson’s Pleasure” in the Oxford University Parks. This used to be a secluded area for male-only nude bathing on the River Cherwell. Any females happening to pass by in punts were saved from potential embarrassment by being directed to a path behind a high corrugated iron fence, which skirted the area. Anecdotes to do with this abound, and it was a popular feature at the time of this novel, but the nude bathing option closed in 1991.

This leads on to the inclusion of females in the traditionally male-dominated environment depicted in The Moving Toyshop. Oxford colleges at this time (and for a good 30 years afterwards) were all single sex, with the men’s colleges vastly outnumbering the women’s. Gervase Fen, of course, is a don at a men’s college; thus all his fellow dons and students are also male.

Females seem to be regarded as a strange species who fly around Oxford like bats on bicycles (because of their academic gowns). Industrious and punctual, they are caricatures of bluestockings. There are only a couple of token females, and these are also “types”; this time of the stereotypical elderly, ugly woman. Sally Carstairs, the shop assistant, is different, but she barely qualifies as an individual with her own character, being the requisite chirpy, young, attractive woman.

However, there are quite a few clearly defined male characters, including the three mentioned: Richard Cadogan, Gervase Fen, the solicitor Aaron Rossiter, plus Cadogan’s publisher Dr. Havering who, in a gigantic coincidence turns out to be yet another beneficiary, Mr. Sharman, Mr. Spode, of Spode, Nutling, and Orlick (publishers of high-class literature), an endearingly fey colleague, Dr. Wilkes, and a couple of students and policemen. Each of these has their unique individual appearance, voice and behaviour pattern. Comparing the lack of attention to the female characters, with the male characters dates the book, and its author, badly.

The title The Moving Toyshop is literal (although there is no supernatural element in this story) but also a literary tease. It comes from a satirical long poem by Alexander Pope, “The Rape of the Lock”:

“With varying vanities, from every part,
They shift the moving toyshop of their heart;”

This couplet is part of a series of observations Pope made about what was usually referred to as “the inconstancy of women.” The behaviour of women, in Pope’s mock-heroic scenario, is controlled by the “sylphs”, tiny airy beings that fly about and exert a subliminal influence upon those they “guard”.

Here the crux of the plot hinges on a complicated will, made by an eccentric old lady. Because of her odd and individual way of looking at the world, and the greed of the solicitor, a series of murders took place, beginning with that of her dear friend, Miss Tardy, in the upstairs room of the toyshop. There is kidnap and several murders, one of which is quite grisly. Edmund Crispin leaves his light witty narrative style aside occasionally, with comments such as:

“Euthanasia, Cadogan thought: they all regard it as that, and not as wilful slaughter, not as the violent cutting-off of an irreplaceable compact of passion and desire and affection and will; not as a thrust into the unimagined and illimitable darkness.”

The plan itself is fiendishly complicated, and hinges on literary references. The rich and eccentric old lady, Mrs. Snaith, had no family. Instead she chose strangers who had provided random acts of kindness to her, to be beneficiaries under her will. These were called “Mold”, “Berlin”, “Ryde”, “West”, and “Leeds”, all of which feature in various limericks by Edward Lear. We deduce from Sally Carstairs that each must have received instructions to look at the personal column of a particular newspaper at a regular time, but none of them know the reason why. Only Mrs. Snaith’s solicitor Aaron Rossiter has the key to it all—and he is not a good man. Sally is “Ryde” because she has a spotted dog. I won’t easily forgive Edmund Crispin for what happens to the loyal spotted dog.

The specific era is evidenced by the nude bathers seen in the comic scene, when rowing along the river Cherwell, at Mesopotamia, where it meets the river Thames. We are also made aware that members of the university are not allowed to drink in public bars at this time, although a student of Gervase Fen is usually to be found expounding his views there. Then there is a new-fangled gadget: a silencer on a gun.

In fact The Moving Toyshop is set in 1938, although Edmund Crispin’s previous novels are set contemporaneously with when they were written. For example his first Gervase Fen novel “The Case of the Gilded Fly” (1944), is set during World War II, and the second “Holy Disorders” (1945) is set after Dunkirk. The Moving Toyshop however, is pre-war.

So is this book worth reading now? It is on several lists of Golden Age Detective books, and highly rated by several of my Goodreads friends. However, I would say it is not at all typical of the genre, and die-hard mystery fans may throw it across the room in disgust. Parts are absurd: ridiculous and extremely coincidental. Things just happen, and randomly manage to work out for the best. One of the most exciting parts was actually copied by Alfred Hitchcock, for the climax of his film “Strangers on a Train”, although Edmund Crispin did not receive the screen credit for it. It was the famous merry-go-round sequence. All the major elements of the scene, such as the two men struggling, the accidentally shot attendant, the out-of-control merry-go-round, and someone crawling under the moving merry-go-round to disable it, were written first in The Moving Toyshop.

That is not the end of this novel however. Instead we have a Poirot-esque reveal, albeit by the murderer of Miss Tardy, describing the layout of the top floor above the shop and where everyone was to begin with. We are told that at the time of the murder, everyone was gathered in the same room, with the stairs being watched by Sally in the shop below, which seems most unlikely. Gervase Fen rules every single person present on the top floor—and then he just announces that Sharman is the killer.

We have already swallowed the audacious idea of the vanishing toyshop and reappearance of the greengrocer’s shop. We learn that someone managed to switch back all the objects, between the time when Richard Cadogan entered during the night and when he returned with the police the next day. Also, although the thieves drew lots, Dr. Havering had to also dispose of Miss Tardy, who had been suffocated, as well as switching two shops in one evening! This may challenge our suspension of disbelief, but somehow it works.

Edmund Crispin himself admitted that The Moving Toyshop was hugely reliant on coincidences. He had less time for the writing of this novel, so he took what he knew and inserted it into the novel. Hence we have Oxford colleges, dramatic societies, liturgical music and settings. We have cliquey jokes and romps around the university; a sense of knowledgeable academics sparring with each other, attempting to outdo each other’s wit, such as:

“Let’s play unreadable books”,

or the frequent disrespectful references to Jane Austen. Then there’s Mr. Hoskins “who had never been known to engage in any sport save the most ancient of them all” and Cadogan’s irritable: “Unless the vocabulary of bawdry has undergone accretions since my young days, no”.

There are also instances where The Moving Toyshop breaks the fourth wall. The reference to Philip Larkin has already been mentioned. Edmund Crispin also makes jokes about the publisher of his own books:

““Let’s go left,” Cadogan suggested. “After all, Gollancz is publishing this book.”(Gollancz was Edmund Crispin’s own, left wing publisher)

as well as suggesting different titles for the novel he is a part of:

““Murder Stalks the University,” said Fen. “The Blood on the Mortarboard. Fen Strikes Back.”
“What’s that you’re saying?” Cadogan asked in a faint, rather gurgling voice.
“My dear fellow, are you all right? I was making up titles for Crispin.””

Personally I delight in this slightly surreal sort of repartee, but many disapprove of taking such liberties.

How on earth do I rate this book? It is bizarre; an entertainingly mad caper, and Edmund Crispin certainly knew how to write in an amusing way. There are several entertaining episodes although it meanders all over the place, and sometimes the solution to the murder mystery seems immaterial. There is very little reasoning that a keen reader of whodunnits is able to do. I personally enjoyed the witticisms and erudition, although the sesquipedalianism was occasionally annoying (and if you are feeling irritated at having to look this word up, reading this review, then you might feel the same way). In fact I suspect that the author might have deliberately planted some obscure or even occasionally obsolete words as an in-joke, smiling to himself as he imagined the consternation of his real-life colleagues on coming across them.

The Moving Toyshop evoked the Oxford university atmosphere of that era very well, and I particularly enjoyed the idea of a poet and an English Literature don solving a mystery based around limericks. But it fell down with its cartoonish depictions of females, and its lack of focus and rambling nature. Being aware now that Bruce Montgomery (“Edmund Crispin”) had a dual nature in real life, and suffered frustration that his more serious musical works were not as critically appreciated as they might be, makes a lot of sense.

All in all, The Moving Toyshop has to stay at my default rating of 3 stars. However, I may find myself reading another in the Gervase Fen series at some point, if I find I need some self-indulgent craziness in my life.

[Francesc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesante novela donde destaca el personaje de Gervase Fen, un excéntrico. La ambientación también está muy bien lograda.
A mi no me apasionó, pero es una novela diferente, con rasgos distintivos.

An interesting novel that highlights the character of Gervase Fen, an eccentric. The atmosphere is also very well done.
I wasn't passionate about it, but it's a different novel, with distinctive features.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the third Gervase Fen mystery, following on from The Case of the Gilded Fly and Holy Orders, and is generally considered the best of the series. This is very much a light hearted, Golden Age mystery, with liberal literary quotes and references to the author - at one point Fen is making up possible book titles for 'Crispin' for example. It is set in 1938, but was written in 1945 and contains a magical and unreal storyline which does require a certain amount of 'joining in' with the sense of the impossible and madcap qualities of the novel.

The story begins with poet Richard Cadogan, a poet, who goes to Oxford for a holiday. However, with the last train halting at Didcot, he hitches a lift and then begins to walk. On the way he comes across an open toyshop and, on investigating, finds the body of a murdered woman upstairs. Of course, he contacts the police, who go back with him in the morning, only to find there is no toyshop and no body. Cadogan goes to his old friend Gervase Fen for help, who happily helps him in a madcap investigation concerning eccentric wealthy ladies, legacies, a sinister lawyer and lots of chasing various people around Cambridge. Of course, there is a pretty girl to protect and, also of course, Fen is impatient that nobody else seems to have worked out who committed the crime and wraps the mystery up prettily by the end of the book. Great fun and a good example of the authors work.

[Aitor Castrillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Novela leía en el club de lectura "Se ha escrito un crimen".

El enigma del caso tiene sustancia, tenemos un crimen que parece irresoluble, una juguetería que aparece y desaparece, varios sospechosos y un protagonista peculiar, peeeero que no he pillado muchas de las referencias culturales y tampoco conozco a nadie que diga "¡por mis patas de conejo!" o "caracoles".

En cualquier caso, me ha parecido que el autor resuelve con mucho oficio una novela peculiar con excentricidades varias, un humor muy british y una investigación diferente.

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

#10 Favourite Read of 2012

By my paws and whiskers this was quite simply brilliant.

Listed in Keating's 100 Best Crime and Mystery Books, Moving Toyshop is "a froth of bubbling spirits, a sparkling example of the donnish detective story", at its heart is the absurd disappearance of a toyshop visited in midnight Oxford, which is explained with perfect plausibility by the time of the denouement. One night, Richard Cadogan, poet and would-be bon-vivant, finds the body of an elderly woman in an Oxford toyshop, and is hit on the head. When he comes to, he finds that the toyshop has disappeared and been replaced with a grocery store. Turns out his old friend Professor Gervase Fen has a penchant for investigating unusual crimes.

The premise alone was enough to get me hooked, I went from knowing nothing of Crispin to being desperate to read more in just a few short passages. Both the style of writing and the main character of Gervase Fen reminded me of Douglas Adams and specifically Dirk Gently in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, the influence is quite obvious I think.

That such a quirky self referential novel was written in 1946 astounds me. It reads like a modern day farce that Jasper Fforde or even Stephen Fry would be proud of, the quality of writing and humour is that high. There aren't many laugh out loud moments but the entire book is filled with joy that will keep a smile on your face.

The delightful play on words and genre conventions that litter the novel are a particular delight.

"The Blood on the Mortarboard, Fen Strikes Back" said Fen
"What's that you're saying?" gurgled Cadogan
"My dear fellow, I was making up titles for Crispin"

Is just one of a series of moments where the characters "break the fourth wall" of the narrative and/or draw attention to the tools of writing a mystery novel.

An interesting aspect of this title is the, almost, backgrounding of the detective Gervase Fen, star of the Edmund Crispin series of whodunnit novels. Whilst he is obviously the character that leads the hunt for the murderer it is Cadogans story from start to finish. He's not exactly a Dr Watson character so in my experience this makes him it a rarity.

For fans of the classic mystery this is an essential read and a gateway in to the work of Crispin, for those of you who find the English sense of humour appealing you really can't go wrong with this one. A book so good that a year and nearly 250 (mostly crime) books later it is still as memorable and enjoyable to think about as when I first read it.

[Lois Bujold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, hm.

Late Golden Age British mystery, from just before WWII changed everything. As I was primed by Sayers, the Oxford setting was a draw, and well-drawn enough. Alas, not Sayers. Good writing on the sentence level, but oddly lacking in interiority, which made the characters seem puppets of their complicated plot. It did not quite succeed in selling me on its plot therefore.

Period-authentic unconscious sexism, which, had I been reading it back during its author's lifetime, I would not have noticed in the way a fish doesn't notice water. The Plucky Shopgirl figure did not quite make up for this, due to the hollow-puppet problem.

The two main characters had the most development, but I didn't really warm to them, though I presumably was supposed to.

I picked this up in part because it was billed as humorous, which... it was a near-miss on, despite some good snarky lines here and there. Victim too innocent, her fate too gruesome for it to hit the cozy mark (which, to be fair, I don't think it was aiming for.)

I seem to have accidentally started with #3 rather than #1 -- I may need to circle back to the first volume to give the series character/s a fair shake. It did do one thing I wanted, which I also generally want from my F&SF reading, which was to take me to a very different place than my here & now.

Ta, L.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

reading vlog: https://youtu.be/jAHVnp2GrVU

i enjoyed the character of gervase fen and the oxford setting, but the mystery wasn't very compelling + i found it hard to keep track of the storyline and wider cast of characters!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always nice to find a new author and a series of books to dive into. Fen an Oxford Don who investigates murders. This one was over a complicated will, a disappearing toy shop and a body. Cadogan a poet is bored and comes to Oxford for adventure and gets it in spades.

Amusing,well written, far fetched and highly entertaining.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book so much! I'm honestly offended I didn't come across it earlier. This is a wonderfully vintage British mystery that feels like you are on a tour of pre-war Oxford run by a tipsy literature professor. While the mystery leaves something to be desired, this book is so much fun to read that it doesn't matter. Case in point: the prolonged chase scene involves detailed explanation of processional decorum in the weekday Matins service at St. Christopher. I could not be more into this if I tried.

This is the third in the Gervase Fen series, but it stands very well on its own. Our protagonist, Richard Cadogan, is a published poet who wants to avoid a lecture tour in America (the horror). He takes a vacation up to Oxford, wishing for adventure, and adventure finds him almost immediately. He sees a dead body in a toyshop and tries to return to the scene with the police, at which point the toyshop has mysteriously vanished. He meets up with his friend, professor Gervase Fen, who starts investigating with him based only on a tenuous link to a book of comic verse. Fen and Cadogan are great, and the writing is so fun. I had to look up about twelve words (my favorite: "cachinnation") and they play "Detestable Characters in Fiction" and "Unreadable Books" when they get stuffed in cabinets. The supporting cast is equally good, especially the army of undergrads that help and hinder the progress of the case.

My favorite part of this book is how firmly set in Oxford it is. There are chase scenes that wind through the streets and end up at Parson's Pleasure. The traffic on the Cornmarket is a key plot point. Everyone is in everyone else's private rooms drinking whiskey. If I read more Crispin, I want it to be set in Oxford. It was truly so fun to read.

Some other thoughts:

- The truck driver who was reading D.H. Lawrence made me laugh out loud several times. I am in love with this character. I am also in love with Mr. Hoskins (along with the entire female population of Oxford) and the very snobby Mr. Barnaby. The two undergrads leaving the Hamlet seminar and taking the police with them was so funny.

- At the start of this adventure, we are led to believe that Richard Cadogan, who is in his late thirties, is knocked out cold for several hours. He then wakes up after very little sleep, is dismissed by the police, and proceeds to a pub with Fen, where he drinks five (5!!) pints at 11 AM. We are THEN led to believe that instead of passing out, Cadogan is able to adventure for the next 12 hours. Though I would certainly feel a shot of adrenaline when held at gunpoint, I can confidently say that I would have been snoring by noon, adventure be damned. Five pints after 3 hours of concussed sleep??? What was in the water in the 1930s??????????

- Alice Winkworth appearing in the tea shop also made me laugh aloud. I did not need this explained to me. Oxford feels like that kind of place.

- I will never think of Measure for Measure again without laughing. See how many of these are about laughing??? This book truly tickled me.

Words I looked up while reading this book: steatopygic, atrabilious, tautological, myrmidons, prognathous, perorate, rodomontade, cachinnation, debouches, parturition

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I knew I was going to like this book when I opened it to the section where the two sleuths, Cadogan and Gervase Fen, find themselves bound and locked in a closet. The rest of the college is away at lunch, and with no one to rescue them, they must amuse themselves with a game called "Unreadable Books."

'All right. Ulysses.'
'Yes. Rabelais.'
'Yes. Tristram Shandy.'
'Yes. The Golden Bowl.'
'Yes. Rasselas.'
'No. I like that.'
'Clarissa, then.'
'Yes. Titus ....'

Ugh ... how spot on! Within the last year, I've started and abandoned all of these titles (except Clarissa, which is too heavy to either hold aloft or rest on the belly without damaging one's vitals and entrails).

Is The Moving Toyshop a good mystery? Well, yes ... at times you may wonder who committed the murder ... but that's not the point. Mostly, it's just pure entertainment, a rambustious farce so well larded with literary allusions and aspersions that you will spend more time wondering about "Who said that?" than about "Who done it?"

If you read and enjoyed Milne's Red House Mystery for it's wit and occasional silliness, then by all means pick up this seriously comic crime classic. You'll enjoy its zany characters, slapstick humor, and self-incriminating tone.

So, let's play "Unreadable books" ... Pickwick Papers.

[Mir · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't started yet and already I like it:

"NOTE None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious."

[Emmy B. · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a piece of misogynistic nonsense!

Since this book saw it fit to do some Jane Austen bashing, I think it is fit that I point out the beautiful ironies that would have made that lady laugh about this very book (though irony not in the literary sense but in the situational sense):

1) According to Edmund Crispin the ladies in Jane Austen are not very well constructed, while his own view of women is as follows: when Fen asks a womanising undergrad how come he is so successful with the ladies, he says, and I quote: “I quieten their fears and give them sweet things to eat. It seems never to fail.” Yes, Crispin, you are a fucking ladies genius!
2) Nobody fucking knows who the fuck Edmund Crispin is, whereas you’d have to be a mutant locked in a cellar not to know who Jane Austen is.

But anyway, I should not get so annoyed about some idiot nobody’s views on women, especially since that idiot nobody is from the 1930s. I can, and do, however, fail to enjoy stories, which are patently inferior to the output of women of the same time in the same genre, when said stories are bigoted, poorly written, and not as funny as they clearly think they are. What a lesson to all the bigots today: if you espouse stupid, prejudiced views in your writing about whole groups of people, people a hundred years from now reading you will think you a backward, unsophisticated moron who had the education to know better.

As to the story, well: Gervase Fen is an annoying bully whose method is spurious though he is such a genius, apparently, whose sense of humour is lacking, though he thinks it is ever present. A coward, an idiot and not a pleasant person to follow in a story. I cannot stress enough how inferior he is to, say, Hercules Poirot or Lord Peter Wimsey, or Miss Marple or a thousand other detectives. The mystery is stupid and not very engaging. I have a feeling that unless you’re one of Edmund Crispin’s friends from Oxford of that time you will find it hard to understand what he thinks is so funny about the many observations about the city. The whole is just such an unimpressive piece of silliness, that I would read and forget the next day were it not for the women hating and the Jane Austen bashing.

DNF

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

El británico Edmund Crispin, seudónimo de Bruce Montgomery, nos ofrece una aventura de detectives con toques de humor al más puro estilo de Arthur Conan Doyle y G.K. Chesterton. Crispin, licenciado en Lenguas Modernas en Oxford, únicamente publicó nueve novelas y dos colecciones de cuentos, todas ellas de género policíaco y con Gervase Fen como protagonista. El excéntrico Gervase Fen es todo un hallazgo: profesor de literatura inglesa en el ficticio St. Christopher’s College de Oxford, y detective aficionado, se mueve en el terreno del humor británico más clásico, delirante por momentos, pero siempre divertido y entretenido.

‘La juguetería errante’ (The Moving Toyshop, 1946), sigue el patrón de averiguar quién es el asesino de la historia. Richard Cadogan, la misma noche que llega a Oxford, se encuentra un cadáver en una juguetería; sufre un percance, y no puede acudir a la policía hasta el día siguiente, con la sorpresa de que no solo ha desaparecido el cadáver, sino también el lugar del crimen. Esto se cuenta en el primer episodio. Ante tal misterio, Cadogan decide acudir a su amigo Fen.

A partir de aquí, se nos muestra toda una galería de personajes a cuál más peculiar, aderezado de diálogos brillantes, referencias literarias, citas, persecuciones delirantes, burlas sobre el pedante ambiente de Oxford, etc., todo desde el humor más british.

En resumen, una gran novela de misterio, muy entretenida, que prácticamente se lee sola.

[K.J. Charles]

When Stephen VI became Pope, he had the corpse of his predecessor Pope Formosus dug up and put on trial; a further Pope dug him up again and this time had him beheaded. This has always seemed a peculiar way to go on, but having read this book, I have to admit that if someone did disinter the author to give him a slap, I'd see their point.

I have honestly never read anything so intolerably smug and self-satisfied in my life. It's basically an entire book about how people who went to Oxford are charmingly eccentric and marvellously superior to everyone else, strung on a truly shitty and predictable murder mystery with which the author can barely be bothered anyway because it's more important to go on about how great Oxford alumni are in their delightful oblivious selfishness and hilarious privileged twattery.

Recommended for anyone who went to Oxford 40 years ago but can't stop going on and on and ON about it.

(Yes, I feel strongly about this. I had two hours and hadn't brought anything else to read.)

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great intro into the world of Fen. I had never read any of Edmund Crispin book's before.
It is basically a locked room scenario, where it seems as if there was no way to commit the murder, but a murder was definitely accomplished.
The character of Fen is a great literary construction. He is the odd detective that always goes his own way, never letting the police help in the investigation, but handing them the solution at the end. It is a tried and true device that author's today still make use of.
The only complaint I have about this book is the ending. The actual murderer was a boring choice, I thought bringing some in from outside the building, after all the front door was unlocked at one point, would have been far more interesting.
A great book, with just one flaw, is still a great book.

[David Kern]

This is probably the best book ever written in English.

[Bill on GR Sabbatical · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hopeful that this mystery set in Oxford would be just my cup of tea, but it was too preposterous to be interesting as a mystery and the humor too sophomoric to enjoy.

[Susan in NC · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5-4 stars for this funny, at times farcical, convoluted romp through Oxford with Professor Gervase Fen.

As the book opens, Fen’s college chum, Richard Cadogan, is a poet looking for an adventurous holiday- he certainly gets more than he bargained for! He takes the train to Oxford, arriving late, and has forgotten the address of his lodgings. He hitches a ride and is put down at Oxford, and walking along, is struck by a toyshop he doesn’t remember. Oddly, the door is open, so he walks in, thinking he’ll notify the owner and be on his way. Instead, he finds a dead body and gets knocked out from behind; when he comes to, he’s in a storage closet. He manages to get out and return with the police, but the toyshop is gone, a grocery store in it’s place. No body either, of course! Perfect case for Fen, the rather pedantic, quirky Professor of English Literature who’s built a reputation as an amateur detective.

I read this with the Reading the Detectives group for an upcoming read. I enjoyed book 1, but was unable to get book 2. I could have sworn Fen was described in Book 1, The Case of the Gilded Fly as an older, chubby man. Here, he’s about 40, lean and lanky! Anyway, he appears to always be steps ahead of everyone else in a case, and this time refuses to call in the police, preferring to apprehend the killer with his amateur posse of drunk undergraduates! It’s a convoluted case, no spoilers, but Fen doesn’t share his deductions until after the action-packed finale on a “roundabout” at an Oxford fair. I assume this is what we would call a merry go round, but couldn’t believe how dangerous this was - the amusement ride goes very fast. This is a golden age mystery, I assume England has stricter safety rules now!

Anyway, 1/2 star for the humor and sense of fun. I would read on in the series, as long as it doesn’t devolve into too much farce.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent and definitely interesting old (1946-published) thriller. I closed this book last week wondering how could Edmund Crispin (1921-1978) pull off a riveting denouement while operating on a tight plotline. While reading, I was wondering how would he tie up the loose ends but the ending was just believable that I had the urge to read it once again.

Why do the current mystery-thriller writers don't write this way anymore? In 2006, P.D. James picked it as one of her five most riveting crime novels but I read one of his novels and did not find any trace of Crispin's ingenuity.

The story is about a lost toy shop. Poet Richard Cadogan sees an open toy one evening and intrigued why it is felt open, he enters and sees a dead old woman. He leaves the scene and comes back the following morning and it is gone. He seeks the help of his friend, Oxford Professor of English Language and Literature and an amateur detective, Gervase Fen and together, akin to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, the unravel the mystery of the toy shop.

They say that if you want to develop your skill as a writer in weaving plots, go for mystery-thrillers like those of Agatha Christie. I have read her The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (3 stars) but I liked this one of Crispin better. In both instances, I had no idea, even a remotest one, who could be the culprit but in this case by Crispin, the mystery of the lost toy shop (replaced by a grocery), was even more intriguing that its whodunnit.

Masterful handling of the plot. Remarkable twists. The best thriller I've read so far.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 questionable plot mechanics are discussed in situ:

…yet, when all things were considered, there was no great reason why Miss Alice Winkworth should not be eating tea in the same café as themselves. To them it appeared odd; to her, no doubt, it appeared odd also; but an outsider would have been wholly unmoved by the coincidence. (P 140)

A plan (using some of Fen’s seminar students) is questioned:

“I don’t think this is going to work,” Mr. Beavis remarked with some apprehension.
“It will work," Fen responded confidently, “because no one expects this sort of trick outside a book”

A long, highly detailed description of The Botley Fair is punctuated with “Like a scene for a Graham Greene novel,” Cadogan though as he peered in.

Literature is central to the book, which you would expect with an Oxford Don who specializes in Literature –

“Let’s play ‘Unreadable Books’,”, he suggested.
“All right. Ulysses.”
“Yes. Rabelais.”
“Yes, Tristram Shandy.”
“Yes. The Golden Bowl.
“Yes. Rasselas.”
“No, I like that."
“Good God. Clarrisa, then."
“Yes. Titus --- "
“Shut up a minute. I think I can hear someone coming.”
(p. 91)

-- but even minor characters are interested in the topic:

A police officer who always want to discuss Shakespeare. “Gervase, has it ever occurred to you that Measure for Measure is about the problem of Power?”
"Don’t bother me with trivialities now,” said Fen, annoyed, and rang off.

And a truck driver who gives timely rides turns out to be “a great reader" joins a circulating library, reads “lady’s somebody’s lover” and gets ideas about natural man.

And the author finds time, right towards the hectic ending, to write about the nature of writing poetry in a great and gratuitous discussion:

“…Poetry isn’t the outcome of personality. I mean by that that it exists independently of your mind, your habits, your feelings, and everything that does to make up your personality. The poetic emotion’s impersonal: the Greeks were quite right when they called it inspiration. Therefore, what you’re like personally doesn’t matter a twopenny damn: all that matters is whether you’ve a good receiving-set for the poetic waves. Poetry’s a visitation coming and going at its own sweet will.”
“Well, then, what’s it like?”
“As a matter of fact, I can’t explain it properly because I don’t understand it properly, and I hope I never shall. But it certainly isn’t a question of oh-look-at-the-pretty-roses or oh-how miserable-I-feel-to-day (sic). If it were, there’d be forty million poets in England at present. It’s a curious passive sensation. Some people say it’s as if you’ve noticed something for the first time, but I think it’s more as if the thing in question had noticed you for the first time. You feels as if the rose or whatever it is were shining at you. Invariably after the first moment the phrase occurs to you to describe it; and when that’s happened, you snap out of it: all your personality comes rushing back, and you write the Canterbury Tales or Paradise Lost or King Lear according to the kind of person you happen to be. That’s up to you. “
“And does it happen often?”
In the darkness, Cadogan shrugged. “Every day. Every year. There’s no telling if each time, whenever it is, mayn’t be the last…. In the meantime, or course, one gets dull and middle-aged.”
(P 189)

[Rosario]

I bought this because I read somewhere that Agatha Christie was a friend of Crispin's and really liked his books. I'm always on the lookout for more Golden Age-type mysteries!

It started well. I was intrigued by the idea of this moving toyshop, and what the hell might have happened there. But it all went downhill from there. Crispin is nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is, his female characters are crap, and his male characters are obnoxious. They're very callous and go around sowing chaos and don't seem to care about the impacts of their actions on others. And the mystery was preposterously overcomplex.

By about 2/3 in we had found out why the toyshop had been there one night and not the next morning, and since that was the only element I cared the least about, there was no reason to keep reading.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has taken me many years to begin to undo the habits authors like Edmund Crispin set me into. My motto has been for many years that of The West Wing's Jed Bartlett: never say in one word what you can say in one hundred. I also follow Dead Poets Society's Mr. Keating's advice to avoid common phrasing. So when Edmund Crispin trots out words like "steatopygic" or "suilline", I'm content (even if I have to look them up). And when someone not only explained, but "He explained at great length. He explained with a sense of righteous indignation and frustration of spirit" – well, that's a kindred spirit, that is. And when Fen uses variations on the White Rabbit's exclamations, I sigh and know that yes, Crispin is in part to blame for the fact that I don't speak – or write – like anyone else I know. It takes great concentration to write an email shorter than a thousand words (or in one draft).

Maybe books like this are one reason I didn't swear for a good portion of my life (at least until I started driving regularly). "'– you,' Mr Sharman said viciously."

Maybe books like this are one reason I love a pretty simile. I love an "open window where the porter leaned, like a princess enchanted within some medieval fortalice". And "Wordsworth resembled a horse with powerful convictions".

And I don't read like anyone else I know, not in "real life" at least. That's why blogs and book-centric sites are so valuable – I know there are people out there whose standards are – well, Edmund Crispin high and not Stephanie Meyer high.

"'Sorry. It was a quotation from Pope.'
"'I don't care who it was a quotation from. It's really rather rude to quote when you know I shan't understand. Like talking about someone in a language they don't know.'"
- I wonder if that's a backhanded slap at Dorothy L. Sayers and Lord Peter's habit of pulling out mass tonnages of quotes, often in random languages. In the only other Crispin I've read in recent years, The Case of the Gilded Fly, there was a remark I very definitely took as such. (I wonder if the "speaking disrespectfully of the immortal Jane" was indicative of the author's real feelings.

It felt very much like the moving toyshop of the title was merely a vehicle (so to speak) for Fen to sail through and show off his effortless brilliance. And for various characters to break the third wall with disconcertingly hilarious references to the author, the publisher, and the fact that they're not, technically, real persons. ("'Let's go left,' Cadogan suggested. 'After all, Gollancz is publishing this book.'" That would have flown about fourteen miles over my head when I originally read this, lo those many years ago.) The flippancy flows fast and glittery – and then when you least expect it comes a deeper stretch that achieve deadly seriousness. "Euthanasia, Cadogan thought: they all regard it as that, and not as wilful slaughter, not as the violent cutting-off of an irreplaceable compact of passion and desire and affection and will; not as a thrust into unimagined and illimitable darkness."

'Sauve qui peut', mes amis – save yourself if you can. If you want to sound like everyone else, it's probably best not to steep yourself in clever, eccentric, carelessly witty British Golden Age mysteries. Oh, my ears and whiskers, it's not easy fending off the philistine.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not going to bother telling you what this book is about. It doesn't matter. All right, it's sort of a murder mystery. But you won't care who was murdered, or why, and it won't matter particularly the identity of the killer. All you'll care about is getting to follow these two brilliant characters around as they make wisecracks, argue with one another, and get into trouble.

I learned about Edmund Crispin from P.D. James, who wrote about him in her book Talking About Detective Fiction. Crispin is incredibly funny and erudite, and really more interested in making fun of crime fiction than contributing to the genre. This one is his most popular, but it's his third in the series and now I want to read them all.

Example of what I love about this book: Two old friends are sitting around in a bar in Oxford, waiting for the next plot point to happen. One proposes that they play "Detestable Characters in Fiction." The rules: both players must agree, each player has five seconds in which to think of a character, and if he can't, he misses a turn. Three missed turns and he loses. They must be characters the author intended to be sympathetic. So here's how the game goes:

"Those awful gabblers, Beatrice and Benedick."

"Yes. Lady Chatterly and that gamekeeper fellow."

"Yes. Britomart in The Faerie Queene."

"Yes. Almost everyone in Dostoevsky."

"Yes. Er--"

"Got you! You miss your turn. Those vulgar little man-hunting minxes in Pride and Prejudice."

At that point, a bar fight breaks out over The Immortal Jane.

So. Witty, mid-century, British. Are you in?

OK, then here's your drink:

They do quite a bit of drinking in this book, and it's mostly beer and whiskey. Combine them and you've got a Beggar's Banquet.

2 oz whiskey
.75 oz maple syrup
.25 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Pale ale
Orange slice for garnish

Shake everything but the beer over ice, then pour into a tall glass filled with ice. Top with beer, garnish with orange, and go be British and witty with Mr. Crispin.

[Libros Prestados · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro que conjuga muy bien comedia y misterio detectivesco. De hecho, lo que plantea es un problema lógico de lo más clásico, solo que adornado por momentos cómicos que parecen sacados de una "screwball comedy". Y sin embargo, esta novela no podría ser más inglesa, con el típico sentido del humor británico.

Nos cuenta la historia de Richard Cadogan, un poeta que decide repentínamente irse de vacaciones a Oxford. Llega a la ciudad de noche y, por casualidades de la vida, entra en una juguetería que tiene la puerta abierta. Allí se encuentra un cadaver, pero cuando vuelve con la policía ya no hay cadaver... ni tienda de juguetes, sino un ultramarinos. De manera que no tendrá más remedio que pedir ayuda a su antiguo compañero, el profesor Gervase Fen. Así empieza un loco misterio en el que se mezclan casualidades, persecuciones y personajes estrambóticos. Lo que lo hace tan gracioso es que aunque las situaciones sean locas, los personajes (la mayoría de ellos catedráticos y alumnos de Oxford) siguen o intentan actuar con total flema inglesa, multiplicando el efecto.

En una definición general, podríamos decir que este libro es una mezcla entre Gerald Durrell y Agatha Christie.

Se supone que este es el tercer misterio protagonizado por el personaje de Gervase Fen, escrito por Edmund Crispin. Yo no había leído hasta ahora ninguna novela suya, pero estoy deseando leer las demás.

[Ceci · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Moving Toyshop is one of my all time favourites. I remember making a presentation on it at school, when I was about 12 years old. And having re-read it now, I see it has lost none of its unique charm. Edmund Crispin is the most adorable of the mystery authors of the golden age. He (or, rather, the narrator) often speaks to the readers directly, as when the attractive sleuth, an Oxford lit prof, Gervase Fen mentions he's inventing book titles for Crispin. The book is farcical, delightful, a true treasure.

As Julian Symons says in Bloody Murder (1985), "Crispin's work is marked by a highly individual sense of light comedy, and by a great flair for verbal deception rather in the Christie manner... At his weakest he is flippant, at his best he is witty, but all his work shows a high-spiritedness rare and welcome in the crime story." I simply love this book, and that's not solely for the brilliant locked room mystery (in the Dickson Carr style) but also for the wonderful personality of the sleuth, Gervase Fen, and his staple comments, such as "Oh, my paws!" and "Oh, my furs and whiskers!" (Those derive from the expostulations made by the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.) It is a wonderful mystery novel, highly exceptional and most enjoyable.