Pretty slight but pleasant enough mystery/adventure novel. A lot of focus on all the capers that happen along the way, less on the mystery. A lot of people here think it's funny but the writing isn't too good and the situations, which although not that funny could be salvaged with good writing, just seem a bit dull. The mystery makes sense and I'm pretty sure you can solve it, although it's not a particularly exciting one. He makes sure to inject his own upper class prejudices into it - his treatment of women is crap with a few misogynist remarks and he pointlessly inserts some insults against socialism through overhearing an anonymous, irrelevant person in a pub.

About 60% of the way through, there's a big (ridiculous, contrived) plot dump done by somebody who's about to murder them... he just dumps all this information on them because??? and a briefcase which would wrap up the case instantly is heavily pointed out... and then a few minutes later both the main characters apparently totally forget about it until it's too late and it's stolen. I mean if he'd done it better I'd see it as some clever mystery genre satire, but it's a bit naff. Obviously it'd be silly if the story just ended there, but why even bring it up in the first place.

Overall it's no more than OK. There are better writers of this sort of thing and the attempted humour just falls flat. ( )

found Penguin copy Powells 5.28.23 for $5.95! such fun - and perfect size for reading in bed ( )

Quite an amusing mystery, and a great delight to have stumbled across an author who has written a whole slew of books to be read. ( )

Cuando el poeta Richard Cadogan decide pasar unos días de vacaciones en Oxford tras una discusión con el avaro de su editor, poco puede imaginar que lo primero que encontrará al llegar a la ciudad, en plena noche, será el cadáver de una mujer tendido en el suelo de una juguetería. Y menos aún que, cuando consigue regresar al lugar de los hechos con la policía, la juguetería habrá desaparecido y, en su lugar, lo que encontrarán será una tienda de ultramarinos en la que, naturalmente, tampoco hay cadáver. Cadogan decide entonces unir fuerzas con Gervase Fen, profesor de literatura inglesa y detective aficionado, el personaje más excéntrico de la ciudad, para resolver un misterio cuyas respuestas se les escapan. Así, el dúo libresco tendrá que enfrentarse a un testamento de lo más inusual, un asesinato imposible, pistas en forma de absurdo poema, y persecuciones alocadas por la ciudad a bordo del automóvil de Fen, Lily Christine III.

I'm sure the author had a wonderful time writing this book. I did not guess how the murder was done in such a way that everybody had an alibi for the time of death except for a sweet young thing of a girl, who couldn't have done it because she is a sweet young thing. And I don't think the solution is something a general reader could figure out. The perpetrator(s) went through a lot of trouble to enact the crime(s), much more than necessary, in my opinion. There is an exciting scene on a roundabout amusement ride; it seemed, on quiet reflection silly since it provided no means of escape, but it did remind me of the merry-go-round scene in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.

I read the book because I happened upon the website for the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, MA, which had an exhibit called "Murder He Wrote". The description lists some of Gorey's favorite murder mystery authors: Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Georgette Heyer, Josephine Tey, Michael Innes, Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, and Cecil Street. I would read another Crispin if I saw one to give him a second change, but I wouldn't seek one out.

(BTW, the list of characters on the Main page includes C.S. Lewis; I don't remember meeting him in the story.) ( )