Edmund Crispin

It's deep winter and time to light the fire, pull up a blanket and curl up with your cat. But has it occurred to you that your feline companion might be licking blood from its paws? Slink through shadows and brush with death in these three classic cat-themed mystery tales from beloved crime authors Catherine Aird, Edmund Crispin, Patricia Highsmith and Ellis Peters. A Case of the Claws brings a thrilling winter chill to the festive season and asks: are these furry friends the guardians of our secrets or omens of misfortune?

A sleuthing Oxford professor hunts a village blackmailer, in a novel by an author who "combines a flawless plot, witty dialogue, and a touch of hilarity" (The New York Times). In the sleepy English village of Sanford Angelorum, Oxford professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen is taking a break from his books to run for Parliament. At first glance, the village he's come to canvass appears perfectly peaceful, but Fen soon discovers that appearances can be deceiving: someone in the village has discovered a dark secret and is using it for blackmail. Anyone who comes close to uncovering the blackmailer's identity is swiftly dispatched. As the joys of politics wear off, Fen sets his mind to the mystery--but finds himself caught up in a tangled tale of eccentric psychiatrists, escaped lunatics, beautiful women, and lost heirs . . ." His books are full of high spirits and excellent jokes, with constant literary allusions . . . But at times the mood turns darker, and Crispin is capable of passages of both genuine suspense and ingenious deduction." --The Daily Telegraph"One of the most literate mystery writers of the twentieth century." --Boston Globe

This 1945 classic British mystery from "a master of the whodunnit . . . combines a flawless plot, witty dialogue and a touch of surreal hilarity" (The New York Times Book Review). On holiday in the town of Tolnbridge with his butterfly net in hand, Prof. Gervase Fen, Oxford don of English Literature, is all set for a good frolic when he learns that the cathedral organist has been murdered. With Scotland Yard unable to make sense of the crime, Fen stands ready to step in. Whether he's chasing butterflies or catching criminals, it's all the same to this amateur sleuth with a penchant for literary allusions and an uncanny knack for solving the unsolvable: like why a small-town church musician would be mixed up with a local coven of witches--or a spy ring of Nazi sympathizers? Finding the answers provides endless amusement for Fen--and for readers as well--in this golden age English detective novel from Edmund Crispin, "an absolute must for devotees of cultivated crime fiction." --Kirkus Reviews Praise for the mysteries of Edmund Crispin "A marvellous comic sense." --P. D. James, New York Times-bestselling author of the Inspector Adam Dalgliesh series "Master of fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek mystery novels, a blend of John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes, M. R. James, and the Marx Brothers." --Anthony Boucher, author of the Fergus O'Breen series "One of the most literate mystery writers of the twentieth century." --The Boston Globe "Beneath a formidable exterior he had unsuspected depths of frivolity." --Philip Larkin, author of A Girl in Winter "One of the last exponents of the classical English detective story." --The Times (London)

From a British mystery author known as "the master of the whodunnit," an amateur detective delights in solving murders at an English boys' school. Prof. Gervase Fen of Oxford University is honored to award the prizes at the Speech Day ceremonies at Castrevenford High School. As it turns out, the headmaster's selection of the part-time sleuth as a presenter is most fortuitous indeed. For the night before the big event, two of the school's staff members are murdered . . . Of course, Fen is happy to do some investigating, if only to get more fodder for the crime novel he's writing. Between the kidnapping, the student romances, and the accidental discovery of a long-lost Shakespearian manuscript, the eccentric Oxford don certainly gets some food for thought. But that's all in a day's work for an amateur detective with a penchant for literary allusions and an uncanny knack for solving the unsolvable. Praise for the mysteries of Edmund Crispin "A marvellous comic sense." --P. D. James, New York Times-bestselling author of the Inspector Adam Dalgliesh series "Master of fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek mystery novels, a blend of John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes, M. R. James, and the Marx Brothers." --Anthony Boucher, author of the Fergus O'Breen series "An absolute must for devotees of cultivated crime fiction." --Kirkus Reviews "One of the most literate mystery writers of the twentieth century." --The Boston Globe "Beneath a formidable exterior he had unsuspected depths of frivolity." --Philip Larkin, poet and author of A Girl in Winter "One of the last exponents of the classical English detective story." --The Times (London)

From a British mystery author known as "the master of the whodunnit," an amateur sleuth searches for a source of poison-pen letters in an English village (The New York Times Book Review). The small town of Cotten Abbas is losing some of its quirky charm now that wealthy Londoners are moving there in droves. Needless to say, the locals are none too happy. But who among them is angry enough to send a series of anonymous letters, revealing unsavory details about the lives of some of the town's residents? Traveling incognito to the rural village, Gervase Fen is eager to find the culprit. Especially when those exposed secrets lead to a shocking suicide, followed by an unsettling murder. Whoever the letter writer is, they have enough dirty laundry on the citizens of the quaint village to make the once-bucolic spot a scary place to set foot. Unless, of course, you are an eccentric Oxford professor like Gervase Fen, with a penchant for literary allusions and an uncanny knack for solving the unsolvable. Praise for the mysteries of Edmund Crispin "A marvellous comic sense." --P. D. James, New York Times-bestselling author of the Inspector Adam Dalgliesh series "Master of fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek mystery novels, a blend of John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes, M. R. James, and the Marx Brothers." --Anthony Boucher, author of the Fergus O'Breen series "An absolute must for devotees of cultivated crime fiction." --Kirkus Reviews "One of the most literate mystery writers of the twentieth century." --The Boston Globe "Beneath a formidable exterior he had unsuspected depths of frivolity." --Philip Larkin, author of A Girl in Winter "One of the last exponents of the classical English detective story." --The Times (London)

This playful whodunit featuring an Oxford don and a permanently silenced opera singer is "a splendidly intricate and superior locked-room mystery" (The New York Times). When an opera company gathers in Oxford for the first postwar production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger, its happiness is soon soured by the discovery that the unpleasant Edwin Shorthouse will be singing a leading role. Nearly everyone involved has reason to loathe Shorthouse, but who amongst them has the fiendish ingenuity to kill him in his own locked dressing room? In the course of this entertaining adventure, eccentric Oxford professor and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen has to unravel two murders, cope with the unpredictability of the artistic temperament, and attempt to encourage the course of true love." One of the last exponents of the classical English detective story . . . elegant, literate, and funny." --The Times of London" Crispin's] books are fast, fun and smart, their hero charming, frivolous, brilliant and badly behaved." --New Review

The complete collection of published short stories of Edmund Crispin, together in one volume for the first time. ‘Detective stories are anti-social. It’s quite impossible to suppose that criminals don’t collect useful information from them, fantastic and far-fetched though they usually are.’ Gervase Fen disagrees with such a pompous assessment. If criminals studied detective stories properly, they would get away with . . . well . . . murder. Forty-six detective stories by the great Edmund Crispin – a splendid hoard! Most of them feature his Oxford don, Gervase Fen, and Inspector Humbleby of Scotland Yard, and the cases turn upon a fine assortment of clues – dandelions and hearing aids, a bloodstained cat and a Leonardo drawing, a corpse with an alibi and a truly poisonous letter . . . there seems no limit to the intricacy of Edmund Crispin’s invention or the sparkle of his wit. Compiled from Beware of the Trains, Fen Country and other disparate sources, and concluding with the recently discovered Christmas novella The Hours of Darkness, this is a long-overdue treasury of original, often startling and invariably entertaining tales by one of the acknowledged masters of the detective story. Erudite and complex, succinct yet leisurely, it is classic crime at its finest.

As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P. G. Wodehouse – discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin. Crime fiction at its quirkiest and best. Long inhabited by a collection of profoundly offbeat locals, there has been a recent influx of the newly rich and well to do arriving in the village of Cotten Abbas … and not everyone is happy about it. New arrivals are receiving anonymous letters that know a little too much about dark secrets and dirty laundry. Gervase Fen is summoned to the scene, but soon finds more than he bargained for. A suicide on Friday, a murder by Sunday, and some villagers that seem hell bent on keeping this mystery unsolved…

Volume 1 of Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen novels, collected together for the first time. THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLYA pretty but spiteful young actress with a talent for destroying men’s lives is found dead in a college room just yards from the office of the unconventional Oxford don Gervase Fen. Anyone who knew the girl would gladly have shot her, but can Fen discover who did shoot her, and why? HOLY DISORDERSHoly Disorders takes Oxford don and part time detective Gervase Fen to the town of Tolnbridge, where he is happily bounding around with a butterfly net until the cathedral organist is murdered, giving Fen the chance to play sleuth. The man didn't have an enemy in the world, and even his music was inoffensive: could he have fallen foul of a nest of German spies or of the local coven of witches, ominously rumoured to have been practising since the 17th century? THE MOVING TOYSHOPRichard Cadogan, poet and would-be bon vivant, arrives for what he thinks will be a relaxing holiday in the city of dreaming spires. Late one night, however, he discovers the dead body of an elderly woman lying in a toyshop and is coshed on the head. When he comes to, he finds that the toyshop has disappeared and been replaced with a grocery store. The police are understandably skeptical of this tale but Richard's former schoolmate, Gervase Fen, knows that truth is stranger than fiction (in fiction, at least). Soon the intrepid duo are careening around town in hot pursuit of clues but just when they think they understand what has happened, the disappearing-toyshop mystery takes a sharp turn…

As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P. G. Wodehouse – discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin. Crime fiction at its quirkiest and best. When a decapitated head is seen floating down the river in the Devon village of Aller, the rural calm is shattered. Soon the corpses are multiplying, and the entire community is involved in the hunt for the murderer. Whilst many chase false trails, it is left to Gervase Fen, Oxford don and amateur criminologist, to uncover the sordid truth…

As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P. G. Wodehouse – discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin. Crime fiction at its quirkiest and best. When young actress Gloria Scott throws herself from Waterloo Bridge, the news sends shockwaves through her film studio. Luckily Gervase Fen is in London to investigate. But when someone acts fast to cover up any evidence – removing all signs of Ms Scott’s identity from her apartment and poisoning a suspicious cameraman – the truth is hard to find…

This annual anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a short novel by Christianna Brand. Mystery stories have been around for centuries—there are whodunits, whydunits and howdunits, including locked-room puzzles, detective stories without detectives, and crimes with a limited choice of suspects. Countless volumes of such stories have been published, but some are still impossible to find: stories that appeared in a newspaper, magazine or an anthology that has long been out of print; ephemeral works such as plays not aired, staged or screened for decades; and unpublished stories that were absorbed into an author’s archive when they died . . . Here for the first time are three never-before-published mysteries by Edmund Crispin, Ngaio Marsh and Leo Bruce, and two pieces written for radio by Gladys Mitchell and H. C. Bailey—the latter featuring Reggie Fortune. Together with a newly unearthed short story by Ethel Lina White that inspired Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, and a complete short novel by Christianna Brand, this diverse mix of tales by some of the world’s most popular classic crime writers contains something for everyone. Complete with indispensable biographies by Tony Medawar of all the featured authors, the fourth volume in the series Bodies from the Library once again brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown.

This annual anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a short novel by Christianna Brand. Mystery stories have been around for centuries—there are whodunits, whydunits and howdunits, including locked-room puzzles, detective stories without detectives, and crimes with a limited choice of suspects. Countless volumes of such stories have been published, but some are still impossible to find: stories that appeared in a newspaper, magazine or an anthology that has long been out of print; ephemeral works such as plays not aired, staged or screened for decades; and unpublished stories that were absorbed into an author’s archive when they died . . . Here for the first time are three never-before-published mysteries by Edmund Crispin, Ngaio Marsh and Leo Bruce, and two pieces written for radio by Gladys Mitchell and H. C. Bailey—the latter featuring Reggie Fortune. Together with a newly unearthed short story by Ethel Lina White that inspired Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, and a complete short novel by Christianna Brand, this diverse mix of tales by some of the world’s most popular classic crime writers contains something for everyone. Complete with indispensable biographies by Tony Medawar of all the featured authors, the fourth volume in the series Bodies from the Library once again brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown.

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 15 tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including newly discovered stories by Dorothy L. Sayers and Edmund Crispin that have never previously been published. With the Golden Age of detective fiction shining ever more brightly thanks to the recent reappearance of many forgotten crime novels, Bodies from the Library offers a rare opportunity to read lost stories from the first half of the twentieth century by some of the genre’s most accomplished writers. This second volume is a showcase for popular figures of the Golden Age, in stories that even their most ardent fans will not be aware of. It includes uncollected and unpublished stories by acclaimed queens and kings of crime fiction, from Helen Simpson, Ethel Lina White, E. C. R. Lorac, Christianna Brand, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, to S. S. Van Dine, Jonathan Latimer, Clayton Rawson, Cyril Alington and Antony and Peter Shaffer (writing as Peter Antony). This book also features two highly readable radio scripts by Margery Allingham (involving Jack the Ripper) and John Rhode, plus two full-length novellas – one from a rare magazine by Q Patrick, the other an unpublished Gervase Fen mystery by Edmund Crispin, written at the height of his career. It concludes with another remarkable discovery: ‘The Locked Room’ by Dorothy L. Sayers, a never-before-published case for Lord Peter Wimsey! Selected and introduced by Tony Medawar, who also provides fascinating pen portraits of each author, Bodies from the Library 2 is an indispensable collection for any bookshelf.

How acute are your powers of perception? Do they begin to match those of Gervase Fen, Oxford don and sleuth supreme? First published in 1953, Beware of the Trains is a collection of sixteen short mysteries. Fen must link a missing train conductor to the murder of a thief, decipher cryptograms to solve the death of a cipher expert and puzzle out a locked-room mystery on Boxing Day. Erudite and complex, these Gervase Fen cases are classic crime at its finest: plot, atmosphere and anecdote, bound together by Edmund Crispin’s inimitable wit and charm.

Dandelions, hearing aids, a blood-stained cat, a Leonardo drawing and a corpse with an alibi… Just some of the unusual clues that Professor Gervase Fen and his friend Inspector Humbleby are confronted with in this sparkling collection of short mystery stories. Employing a skilful balance of ingenuity and humour, Crispin lays out all the clues. Can you solve the case before Professor Fen? First-published posthumously in 1979, Fen Country is Edmund Crispin’s second collection of short stories.

Oxford don and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen is drawn into a mystery solving adventure in this classic British detective novel. When a poet, Richard Cadogan, receives an unexpected 50 advance from his publisher for his new poetry book, he decides to go to Oxford for a well deserved holiday. The change of scenery and peace of mind is what he needs to recover his inspiration for writing. Little does he know that what he envisioned as a leisurely time spent on long walks and visiting friends will turn into a mystery solving adventure full of unexpected and dangerous twists. After an eventful train journey, Cadogan arrives in Oxford late at night only to realize 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 women. Before he knows it, he is knocked out and spends his first night of the holidays locked in the backroom of the shop. When he finally recovers from the concussion, the body is gone, the toyshop has turned mysteriously into a grocery store, and Cadogan himself is accused of trespassing and stealing food. Luckily for the puzzled poet his old university friend, the professor of literature, Gervase Fen is there ready to plunge into the midst of this mystery. The Moving Toyshop, first published in 1946, is Edmund Crispin's most famous novel featuring eccentric amateur detective, Gervase Fen.

Oxford don and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen investigates the murder of a femme fatale in this classic British detective novel. It is October 1940 and at Oxford, the Full Term has just begun. Robert Warner, up and coming playwright known for his experimental approach, has chosen an Oxford repertory theater for the premiere of his latest play, Metromania. Together with his cast he comes to Oxford to rehearse a week before the opening, but Warner's troupe is a motley group of actors among whom is the beautiful but promiscuously dangerous Yseut Haskell. She causes quite a stir with her plots, intrigues and love triangles. When she is found shot dead in the college room of a young man who is infatuated with her, everyone is puzzled and worried; most of the actors have had a reason to get rid of the femme fatale and few have alibis. The police are at loss for answers and are ready to proclaim the incident as suicide, but Gervase Fen, an Oxford don and professor of literature, who thrives off solving mysteries, is ready to help. The Case of the Gilded Fly, first published in 1944, is Edmund Crispin's debut novel and the first Gervase Fen Mystery.