Edmund Crispin: 8 books

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...

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, but little he suspects that what he...

Death and decapitation seem to go hand in hand in the Devon village of Aller. When the first victim's head is sent floating down the river, the village's rural calm is shattered. Soon the corpses are multiplying, and the entire community is involved in the hunt for the murderer. Whilst many chase...

Stars, Starlets, Floozies and factotums to the film world – Gervase Fen suspects them all... The young actress, Gloria Scott, drowns after throwing herself off Waterloo Bridge. The news sends shock-waves around her film studio where Gervase Fen, Oxford Don and amateur criminologist, just...

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...

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...

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...

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...