Edmund Crispin (1921–1978)
Author of The Moving Toyshop
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery, 1921—1978, an English crime writer, science-fiction anthologist and composer.
Writing as Edmund Crispin he is known for his detective novels and short stories featuring Oxford professor, Gervase Fen.
Writing as Bruce Montgomery, he was a prolific composer of vocal and film music.
(ger) Edmund Crispin war das Pseudonym von Robert Bruce Montgomery, 1921—1978, einem englischen Krimiautor, Science-fiction-Herausgeber und Komponisten. Unter dem Namen Edmund Crispin ist er bekannt für seine Detektivromane und -erzählungen um den Oxford-Professor Gervase Fen. Writing as Bruce Montgomery, he was a prolific composer of vocal and film music.
Series
Works by Edmund Crispin
Dead and Dumb 8 copies
Dead and Dumb 3 copies
The Amorous Flea: A Musical Comedy Based on Molière's School for Wives — Composer — 3 copies
Intrigue in the Palace 2 copies
Science Fiction Stories 1 copy
My Joy, My Life, My Crown! 1 copy
Best of SF Two 1 copy
Long Divorce, The 1 copy
Best Tales of Horror 1 copy
Outwards from Earth 1 copy
Danger, Writer at Work 1 copy
Associated Works
Great Detectives: A Century of the Best Mysteries from England and America (1984) — Contributor — 376 copies, 4 reviews
Miraculous Mysteries: Locked Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (2017) — Contributor — 126 copies, 10 reviews
Bodies from the Library 2: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and other Masters of Golden… (2019) — Contributor — 78 copies, 1 review
Bodies from the Library 5: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense from the Golden Age of Detection (2022) — Contributor — 38 copies, 1 review
The Best Science Fiction Stories of C. M. Kornbluth — Introduction, some editions — 5 copies
Classic Crime Gift Set--Police At the Funeral, the Moving Toyshop, Death At the President's Lodging (1988) — Contributor — 1 copy
Appendici in giallo 1 — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Montgomery, Robert Bruce
- Other names
- Montgomery, Bruce
- Birthdate
- 1921-10-02
- Date of death
- 1978-09-15
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- UK
- Country (for map)
- England, UK
- Birthplace
- Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire, England, UK
- Place of death
- Plymouth, Devon, England, UK
- Cause of death
- alcoholism
- Places of residence
- Buckinghamshire, England, UK
Plymouth, Devon, England, UK - Education
- Oxford University (St. John's College)
- Occupations
- schoolmaster
musician
writer (filmscript and filmscore)
crime novelist
anthologist
composer - Organizations
- Detection Club
- Awards and honors
- Guest of Honour, Eastercon, UK (1963)
- Disambiguation notice
- Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery, 1921—1978, an English crime writer, science-fiction anthologist and composer. Writing as Edmund Crispin he is known for his detective novels and short stories featuring Oxford professor, Gervase Fen. Writing as Bruce Montgomery, he was a prolific composer of vocal and film music.
Members
Reviews
Now here's a thing. This was part of a series of sf anthologies issued by Faber & Faber in the 1960s, and they treated them as samplers for the genre - to the extent that the anthologies each went through a number of impressions. 'Best sf three' was first published in 1958; my copy is the third impresssion, published in 1962! Can you imagine that happening now?
The stories were interesting. There were some lacklustre ones, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Michael Shaara's show more 'Grenville's planet' was so-so. Kelley Edwards' 'Counterspy' in particular was all about tracking down a spy in a nuclear power plant. But the technology seems outdated now, and there was no examination of what made the spy a spy in the first place - he was just a bad man in a black hat, and when he was apprehended, the story ended. Murray Leinster's contribution was 'The Wabbler', about a smart missile (a smart underwater mine, actually). This was odd; in the time the story was published, the assumption was that a future technologically advanced device with self-volition would of necessity have a degree of artificial intelligence and a sense of purpose and destiny, even if that destiny was to explode. Now we achieve this with far fewer moving parts and a cruise missile has no more sense of its destiny than my toaster.
I was feeling a bit dubious about this re-read by this point, but then I hit paydirt - 'Food to all flesh' by Zenna Henderson and 'He walked around the horses' by H. Beam Piper. This latter enthused me with its early 19th-century European setting and its very keen grasp of the history and politics of the time (not to mention the big joke at the end).
And then I came to Tom Godwin's 'The Cold Equations'.
This is a classic story, one which I knew well and which every sf fan should know and - well, 'love' isn't quite the right word. Anyone who hasn't read it should go and find a copy NOW and come back later. But I hadn't read it in ten years or more, and in that time I've suffered no little personal loss in my life. So I was not only admiring the way it was written, the economical prose which told the story and sketched out the whole society without any info-dumping, but as the story drew to its close and the stowaway girl was facing death, much to my surprise I found myself close to tears - and this from a fifty-year old pulp sf story! Truly a classic.
Other stories - 'The gift of gab' by Jack Vance, 'Four in one' by Damon Knight and 'The game of rat and dragon' by Cordwainer Smith - stood up equally well and had not aged exceptionally badly. And the anthology ends with Frederic Brown's short-short, 'Answer'. Overall, then, a palpable hit! show less
The stories were interesting. There were some lacklustre ones, especially with the benefit of hindsight. Michael Shaara's show more 'Grenville's planet' was so-so. Kelley Edwards' 'Counterspy' in particular was all about tracking down a spy in a nuclear power plant. But the technology seems outdated now, and there was no examination of what made the spy a spy in the first place - he was just a bad man in a black hat, and when he was apprehended, the story ended. Murray Leinster's contribution was 'The Wabbler', about a smart missile (a smart underwater mine, actually). This was odd; in the time the story was published, the assumption was that a future technologically advanced device with self-volition would of necessity have a degree of artificial intelligence and a sense of purpose and destiny, even if that destiny was to explode. Now we achieve this with far fewer moving parts and a cruise missile has no more sense of its destiny than my toaster.
I was feeling a bit dubious about this re-read by this point, but then I hit paydirt - 'Food to all flesh' by Zenna Henderson and 'He walked around the horses' by H. Beam Piper. This latter enthused me with its early 19th-century European setting and its very keen grasp of the history and politics of the time (not to mention the big joke at the end).
And then I came to Tom Godwin's 'The Cold Equations'.
This is a classic story, one which I knew well and which every sf fan should know and - well, 'love' isn't quite the right word. Anyone who hasn't read it should go and find a copy NOW and come back later. But I hadn't read it in ten years or more, and in that time I've suffered no little personal loss in my life. So I was not only admiring the way it was written, the economical prose which told the story and sketched out the whole society without any info-dumping, but as the story drew to its close and the stowaway girl was facing death, much to my surprise I found myself close to tears - and this from a fifty-year old pulp sf story! Truly a classic.
Other stories - 'The gift of gab' by Jack Vance, 'Four in one' by Damon Knight and 'The game of rat and dragon' by Cordwainer Smith - stood up equally well and had not aged exceptionally badly. And the anthology ends with Frederic Brown's short-short, 'Answer'. Overall, then, a palpable hit! show less
Where I got the book: purchased used through Amazon. Absolutely marvelous dreadful cover.
Having had a few days to allow this murder mystery to percolate through my brain, I have come to the conclusion that the whole thing is a novel-length p*ss-take of the genre and that the author was laughing up his sleeve at the reader the whole time. Set in Oxford during World War II, the story revolves around a repertory theater group who are putting on--from scratch in one week--a play by a brilliant show more playwright who is also involved in the production. Bitchy actress Yseut makes trouble for everyone and practices her seductive wiles on as many men as possible, and gets her comeuppance via a bullet hole in the head. Is the ring on her finger (a gilded fly) a clue?
We are introduced to the amateur detective Gervase Fen, a professor and literary critic who works out the crime in three minutes and spends the rest of the book dropping hints about how he knows what went on but he's not going to tell anyone until they've worked it out for themselves, neener neener neener. This, of course, allows time for another murder to take place, so Fen is in fact responsible for a death. In the meantime, the rest of the cast and crew get on with the show that must go on, nobody really caring a rat's *ss about the murder victim because she was a beyotch and a ho anyway. Which demonstrates that the author knew a lot about actors.
Fen makes me think of the lead character in the brilliant BBC Sherlock, so irritating he's fascinating (I think the original Sherlock was supposed to be that way, but time has hallowed him). The supporting cast is fairly unmemorable, except for Mrs. Fen whom I adore utterly. The "official" detective--whose passion is for literary criticism--is an absolutely brilliant idea, but he's not rounded out well enough for me.
Yep, I honestly think that everything I found annoying about this book was put there on purpose to annoy. I think Crispin was having his bit o' fun with us stupid readers. When he makes Fen say, mid-book, "In fact I'm the only literary critic turned detective in the whole of fiction", I think he's showing us right there that his intention is to subvert the murder mystery genre rather than add to it.
The writing, on the other hand, was superb and often very funny. Crispin displays very little sympathy for the world he describes and the people in it; he's laughing AT everyone, I swear.
This book may get a re-read just because. In the meanwhile, my feelings about a rating hover between a 3 (for being bloody annoying) and a 5 (for being a bloody good writer). Let's just call it a 4 and have done with it. show less
Having had a few days to allow this murder mystery to percolate through my brain, I have come to the conclusion that the whole thing is a novel-length p*ss-take of the genre and that the author was laughing up his sleeve at the reader the whole time. Set in Oxford during World War II, the story revolves around a repertory theater group who are putting on--from scratch in one week--a play by a brilliant show more playwright who is also involved in the production. Bitchy actress Yseut makes trouble for everyone and practices her seductive wiles on as many men as possible, and gets her comeuppance via a bullet hole in the head. Is the ring on her finger (a gilded fly) a clue?
We are introduced to the amateur detective Gervase Fen, a professor and literary critic who works out the crime in three minutes and spends the rest of the book dropping hints about how he knows what went on but he's not going to tell anyone until they've worked it out for themselves, neener neener neener. This, of course, allows time for another murder to take place, so Fen is in fact responsible for a death. In the meantime, the rest of the cast and crew get on with the show that must go on, nobody really caring a rat's *ss about the murder victim because she was a beyotch and a ho anyway. Which demonstrates that the author knew a lot about actors.
Fen makes me think of the lead character in the brilliant BBC Sherlock, so irritating he's fascinating (I think the original Sherlock was supposed to be that way, but time has hallowed him). The supporting cast is fairly unmemorable, except for Mrs. Fen whom I adore utterly. The "official" detective--whose passion is for literary criticism--is an absolutely brilliant idea, but he's not rounded out well enough for me.
Yep, I honestly think that everything I found annoying about this book was put there on purpose to annoy. I think Crispin was having his bit o' fun with us stupid readers. When he makes Fen say, mid-book, "In fact I'm the only literary critic turned detective in the whole of fiction", I think he's showing us right there that his intention is to subvert the murder mystery genre rather than add to it.
The writing, on the other hand, was superb and often very funny. Crispin displays very little sympathy for the world he describes and the people in it; he's laughing AT everyone, I swear.
This book may get a re-read just because. In the meanwhile, my feelings about a rating hover between a 3 (for being bloody annoying) and a 5 (for being a bloody good writer). Let's just call it a 4 and have done with it. show less
Gervase Fen is not particularly interested in a local murder until another decapitated body is found at the village fête.
Some of the humour has not worn well but other parts still had me laughing till it hurt. The mystery was good fun but it was the surrounding repartee and chaos that really made it worth reading.
Some of the humour has not worn well but other parts still had me laughing till it hurt. The mystery was good fun but it was the surrounding repartee and chaos that really made it worth reading.
Plenty of the cast and hangers-on of the first post-war production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger had good motives for murdering the lead bass-baritone - and his brother wasn't too fond of him either. But how could any of them possibly have managed to kill him in own dressing room? Gervase Fen investigates.
An excellent locked-room mystery with strong characters, a robust plot and a very ingenious solution. The immediate post-war context is obvious, and the German and Jewish characters add to show more the story, although the latter is occasionally a bit of an unfortunate caricature. There's a very entertaining scene with some Young Intellectuals discussing Wagner's influence on Hitler, and it gets quite serious on a couple of occasions.
One of the things I like about the Gervase Fen books is that, while they are exceedingly frivolous, they don't trivialise the crimes that take place within them. Crispin goes from silliness to gravity in the blink of an eye and to great effect
There are a lot of literary references - and not only to serious literature: I laughed out loud when the crime writer asking Fen for an interview about his amateur sleuthing comments that she also proposes to interview Mrs Bradley and Albert Campion. show less
An excellent locked-room mystery with strong characters, a robust plot and a very ingenious solution. The immediate post-war context is obvious, and the German and Jewish characters add to show more the story, although the latter is occasionally a bit of an unfortunate caricature. There's a very entertaining scene with some Young Intellectuals discussing Wagner's influence on Hitler, and it gets quite serious on a couple of occasions.
One of the things I like about the Gervase Fen books is that, while they are exceedingly frivolous, they don't trivialise the crimes that take place within them. Crispin goes from silliness to gravity in the blink of an eye and to great effect
There are a lot of literary references - and not only to serious literature: I laughed out loud when the crime writer asking Fen for an interview about his amateur sleuthing comments that she also proposes to interview Mrs Bradley and Albert Campion. show less
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 55
- Also by
- 44
- Members
- 7,145
- Popularity
- #3,433
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 230
- ISBNs
- 254
- Languages
- 12
- Favorited
- 37