British writer and composer, master of fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek mystery novels, a blend of John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes, M.R. James, and the Marx Brothers, as the critic Anthony Boucher once described. Crispin’s nine humorous Gervase Fen novels are among the most individualistic works of the genre. Crispin was a product of the University of Oxford - his friend during university years was Kingsley Amis (1922-1995), who also loved detective stories and wrote one James Bond adventure.
“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.” (Julian Symons in Bloody Murder, 1985)
Edmund Crispin was born Robert Bruce Montgomery in Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire, of Scots-Irish parentage. He was educated at the Merchant Taylor’s School in London. Before World War II Crispin traveled around Europe, particularly Germany. In 1943 Crispin received his B.A. from St. John’s College, Oxford, where read modern languages. From 1943 to 1945 he worked as a schoolmaster at Schrewsbury School. His friend, the poet and novelist Philip Larkin (1922-85), worked nearby and they read each other’s texts - Crispin also dedicated his third book, THE MOVING TOYSHOP (1946), to Larkin. His first detective fiction novel, THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY, appeared in 1944, and introduced to readers his series character Gervase Fen, a cynical Oxford professor. The figure was partly based on the Oxford professor W.E. Moore. Also the deaf and eccentric Professor Wilkes also becomes familiar to the reader. In the story famous but fading playwright Robert Warner goes to Oxford University to mount his latest experimental drama in the college repertory theatre. One of the actresses dies. Circumstances point neither accident nor suicide or murder - it is an impossible murder.
The critic and mystery writer H.R.F. Keating included The Moving Toyshop in 1987 among the 100 best crime and mystery books ever published. “The word to describe The Moving Toyshop is ‘rococo’. It possesses in splendid abundance the ebullient charm of the works of art thus labelled. It is alive with flourishes. Its mainspring the actual disappearance of a toyshop visited in midnight Oxford, has all the right fancifulness, and at the end it is explained with perfect plausibility.” (Keating in Crime and Mystery: the 100 Best Books, 1987) Poet Richard Cadogan, arriving in Oxford for a holiday, finds a dead woman in a room above toyshop. A blow from a blunt instrument hits him unconscious. When he recovers, the dead woman has disappeared and the toyshop has turned into a grocery store. Police do not believe Cadogan’s story and he contacts Gervase Fen. “After all,” Professor Fen says to the poet, “it’s somewhat unusual business, isn’t it.” “So unusual,” says the pot, “that no one in his sense would invent it.” Professor Fen immediately finds a clue: a telephone number written on a piece of paper.
Gervase Fen, Crispin hero, is a Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University. He is tall, about 40, with cheerful, clean-shaven face, dark hair plastered down with water. Usually he wears an enormous raincoat with extraordinary hats. Fell is happily married, he drives a red roadster, and is a read danger behind the wheel. His favorite expostulations “Oh, my paws!” and “Oh, my furs and whiskers!” derive from Lewis Carroll. Fen cooperates with Inspector Humbleby, a policeman. He is interested in literature - perhaps more than solving crimes.
During a nine year period (1944-1953) Crispin published eight novels, establishing his reputation in the field of mystery genre. In 1942 Crispin had read John Dickson Carr’s novel The Crooked Hinge, which altered his view about detective stories and inspired him to create his own detective character. The Case of the Gilded Fly was published by Gollancz while its author was still an undergraduate. In his novels Crispin combined farcical situations with literary references, coincidences with nearly postmodern self-awareness, inappropriate behaviour and sharp observations of the language of various classes and professions. In The Moving Toyshop Crispin lets a truck driver preach “industrial civilization is the curse of our age… We’ve lorst touch with Nachur. We’re all pallid… We’we lorst touch with the ‘body.’”
Crispin’s professional music career started in mid-1940s. Music also inspired his novel THE SWAN SONG (1947), in which a badly behaving bass from the cast of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is killed. The murder is not the tenor. Crispin defends Wagner’s operas, which were sometimes assocoated in post-war England with the Nazis. There is also a vague hint that Gervase Fen had been involved in the murder inversigation of Hitler.
Since the age of fifteen Crispin had played piano - in his youth he worked as an organist and choirmaster. Crispin composed under his own name, Bruce Montgomery, choral and orchestral works, songs, and film music, including several scores for Carry On series. He built a bungalow in Devon, and settled down to a quiet country life, collected classical records, and took an interest in church matters. After his short story collection, BEWARE OF THE TRAIN (1953), Crispin kept long silence as a novelist, but turned his attention increasingly to writing music. He became one of Britain’s leading critics of detective fiction, reviewing from 1967 regularly for the Sunday Times. Crispin married late in life. In 1977 he published THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON, set in the Devon countryside. It was the last Gervase Fen story. By the early 1970s, Crispin’s drinking finally overwhelmed him and he started to have money problems. Crispin died on September 15, 1978. FEN COUNTRY, a collection on short stories, appeared posthumously in 1979.
As a science-fiction anthologist Crispin’s work was unique in several ways. He was an early advocate of science fiction and made no apologies or excuses for presenting it as a legitimate form of writing - an attitude that was not common in the 1950s, when science-fiction was not yet respectable branch of literature. His selection of stories showed him to be thoroughly familiar with its currents in both magazine and book form, and his introductions were informed and illuminating.
For further reading: ‘Edmund Crispin’ by Michael Dirda, in Mystery and Suspense Writers, ed. by Robin W. Winks (1998); Encyclopedia Mysteriosa by William L. DeAndrea (1997); Memoirs by Kingsley Amis (1991); Selected Letters of Philip Larkin, ed. by Anthony Thwaite (1992); Crime and Mystery: the 100 Best Books by H.R.F. Keating (1987); Twentieth Century Mystery and Crime Writers, ed. by John M. Reilly (1985); Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, ed. by Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler (1976) - See other university professors as mystery writers: Michael Innes, Nicholas Blake (pseudonym for Cecil Day Lewis)
Selected bibliography:
Published music:
Science-fiction and horror: