Dandelions, hearing aids, a blood-stained cat, a Leonardo drawing, a corpse with an alibi, and a truly poisonous letter... are just some of the unusual clues that Oxford don/detective Gervase Fen and his friend Inspector Humbleby are confronted with in this sparkling collection of short mystery stories by one of the great masters of detective fiction.
Employing this skilful balance between ingenuity and humour, Crispin lays out all the clues so that the reader is given the opportunity to solve each crime by themselves before it is done so immaculately by the eccentric but immensely gifted Professor Fen.
First-published post-humously in 1979, Fen Country is Edmund Crispin's second collection of short stories.
Author Biography
Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery (usually credited as Bruce Montgomery) (2 October 1921 - 15 September 1978), an English crime writer and composer.
Montgomery wrote nine detective novels and two collections of short stories under the pseudonym Edmund Crispin (taken from a character in Michael Innes's Hamlet, Revenge!). The stories feature Oxford don Gervase Fen, who is a Professor of English at the university and a fellow of St Christopher's College, a fictional institution that Crispin locates next to St John's College. Fen is an eccentric, sometimes absent-minded, character reportedly based on the Oxford professor W. E. Moore. The whodunit novels have complex plots and fantastic, somewhat unbelievable solutions, including examples of the locked room mystery. They are written in a humorous, literary and sometimes farcical style and contain frequent references to English literature, poetry, and music. They are also among the few mystery novels to break the fourth wall occasionally and speak directly to the audience.
