Taut and clever, Love Lies Bleeding revolves around events which begin at the Castrevenford Schools, separate boys and girls institutions where small disturbances have surprising ramifications. Gervase Fen, the Oxford Professor of Language and Literature, who has been called in to speak for the schools' Speech Day by the Headmaster, an old university acquaintance, is soon in the thick of a mystery which grows deadlier as it becomes more inexplicable. Was young Brenda Boyce assaulted, and, if so, by whom? Who has broken into the chemistry laboratory, and what have they stolen? And what, if anything, is worth the risk of committing murder? As Fen pursues the increasingly convoluted path toward the truth, he discovers happenings more convoluted than any play.

Author Biography

Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery, an English crime writer and composer. He graduated from St John's College, Oxford, in 1943, with a BA in modern languages, having for two years been its organist and choirmaster. From 1943 to 1945 he taught at Shrewsbury School and in 1944 published the first of nine Gervase Fen novels, The Case of the Gilded Fly. He became a well respected reviewer of crime, writing for the Sunday Times from 1967 until his death in 1978.