Professor Fen stands for Parliament and exposes a murderer
The best of the Golden Age of British mystery(1) Edmund Crispin a.k.a. Bruce Montgomery (2) Michael Innes a.k.a. John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (3) Dorothy Sayers (4) Margery Allingham (5) Michael Innes a.k.a. John Innes Mackintosh Stewart (with a drop in rank for his mysteries that went off the surreal deep-end).
Out of my Fab Four Brits, Michael Innes and Edmund Crispin share the most similarities. They were both of Scots-Irish background, both wrote their mysteries under pseudonyms while teaching at college, and both were educated at Oxford -- Oriel College and St. John's College, respectively. They both wrote highly literate mysteries with frequent allusions to the classics (nine out of ten of which go zooming right over my head). Michael Innes has his detective, Sir John Appleby poke fun at this high-brow type of murder fiction in "Death at the Chase":
"That's why detective stories are of no interest to policemen. Their villains remain far too consistently cerebral."
Expect that even the most vicious murderer in an Edmund Crispin mystery will quote Dryden or Shakespeare at the drop of a garrote. "Frequent Hearses" is a fertile setting for this type of classical badinage, since its plot involves the making of a film based on the biography of Alexander Pope. Gervase Fen, Oxford don of English Language and Literature, and amateur detective extraordinaire is hired by the film company as a story consultant, and he is plagued throughout the book by a Scotland Yard detective who is an amateur classics scholar. Fen wants to discuss the murder. Chief Inspector Humbleby wants to talk about the Brontes and Dr. Johnson. Neither one will admit to a less than perfect understanding of either his profession or his hobby, and both despise amateurs. Their encounters keep "Frequent Hearses" sparkling along right up until its final page. Here is a sample of dialogue, wherein Inspector Humbleby deliberately misunderstands Fen's explanation of the film's subject:
"Based," Fen reiterated irritably, "on the life of Pope."
"The Pope?"
"Pope."
"Now which Pope would that be, I wonder?" said Humbleby, with the air of one who tries to take an intelligent interest in what is going forward. "Pius, or Clement, or--"
Fen stared at him. "Alexander, of course."
"You mean"---Humbleby spoke with something of an effort---"you mean the Borgia?"
All of Crispin's characters are carefully (one might say 'crisply') developed, and distinguished for the reader by a quirk or eccentric manner of speech (sometimes Crispin overplays the eccentricity at the expense of realism, especially with his main protagonist-- I do wish Fen would stop expostulating, "Oh, my fur and whiskers!"). Physical description is sketchy. If one of Crispin's characters walked past you in the street, you probably wouldn't recognize him. However, if you were to overhear his conversation with the postman---
And I don't mean to imply that "Frequent Hearses" is all dialogue and no action. There is one especially harrowing scene where a young woman chases the murderer into a maze in order to learn his identity and then (when reason returns) can't find her way back out again. By the time Fen rescues her, she has endured an experience right out of an M.R. James horror story (in fact, the young woman quotes M.R. James at length while she is traversing the maze - a typical Crispin characteristic).
The mystery surrounding the murderer's identity and motivation is as cleverly convoluted as the maze, and it is equally as hard to get to its heart. Crispin himself wrote and published at least one film script and composed music for several films, so "Frequent Hearses" is told with the knowledge of a movie industry insider.
If you like vintage British mysteries with a 'classical education' and haven't yet discovered the 'Professor Fen' novels, then you're in for a treat-- assuming you can find these out-of-print volumes. Here are all nine of the Fen mysteries plus two collections of short stories, in case you jump into 'Frequent Hearses' and want to keep going:
"The Case of the Gilded Fly" ("Obsequies at Oxford"), 1944; "Holy Disorders", 1945; "The Moving Toyshop", 1946; "Swan Song" ("Dead and Dumb"), 1947; "Love Lies Bleeding", 1948; "Buried for Pleasure", 1948; "Frequent Hearses", 1950; "The Long Divorce", 1952; "Beware of the Trains", 1953 (short stories); "The Glimpses of the Moon", 1978; "Fen Country", 1979 (short stories).
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The cat who saw MartiansIn "Love Lies Bleeding," Mr. Merrythought, the ancient, slovenly bloodhound thwarted a double murder.
"The Long Divorce" introduces Lavender, the cat who sees Martians. (Either you have a cat who sees Martians---there is one perched on my printer right now, staring off into what humans refer to as 'empty space'---or else you will have to take Mr. Crispin's word that such perceptive cats exist.) Lavender, the marmalade-colored tomcat with unusual visual powers is instrumental in the capture of a murderer.
Murder is really secondary to the story of a village plagued by an anonymous letter-writer. Some of the letters are merely obscene. Others are poisonously factual.
Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford is importuned by an old friend to expose the anonymous letter-writer. And so Fen, microscopically disguised under the name of 'Mr. Datchery' (borrowed from Charles Dickens's "The Mystery of Edmund Drood") takes himself off to his friend's bucolic village.
"To an obbligato of bird-song Mr Datchery marched beneath a bright sky towards Cotton Abbas. And he carolled lustily, to the distress of all animate nature, as he walked....The directions given him at Twelford had been explicit. But since he believed himself to possess an infallible bump of locality, he was soon tempted to modify them with a variety of short cuts, and after about three miles he discovered, much to his indignation, that he was lost."
Is that or is that not Fen to the life?
"The Long Divorce" (1952) is eighth in Crispin's series of mysteries starring his literate, cynical, sometimes bumptious amateur detective. It is also a comedy of rural, post-war England. The characters are dead-on: the army veteran who is trying to stop smoking; the female physician who is struggling to build a practice in a conservative backwater; the teenager who both loves and is ashamed of her obnoxious, money-grubbing father.
Many of the mystery writers of the 1940s and 1950s were guilty of creating one-dimensional female stereotypes, or going off on the occasional anti-feminist rant. Margery Allingham, Rex Stout, and John Dickson Carr come readily to mind as producing examples of this type of writing. Crispin also creates the occasional stereotype, especially in his early novels and some of his short stories, but the characters in "The Long Divorce" are fully and fascinatingly realized---especially the women (okay, okay---except for the innkeeper's wife and the sluttish barmaid. But they are very minor players).
Crispin also works in an ongoing and thoughtful dialogue on suicide, and there is a hair-raising scene where Fen just manages to prevent a young girl from killing herself.
"The Long Divorce" is a classical Golden-Age British mystery, a thoughtful essay on suicide, and a marvelous, occasionally hilarious study of the rural English character. I feel the same frustration that Fen felt, when at story's end he reveals his true name to a gathering of the book's characters---and very few of them have heard of him.
Why isn't Fen at least as well-known as Lord Peter or Miss Marple or Nero Wolfe? He certainly deserves to be.
A more macabre folk jingle than, say "Monday's child is fair of face..." but appropriate for a murder mystery that our detective-don solves while standing for Parliament in rural England.
Along with the eccentric detective Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, Edmund Crispin also features one of his eccentric animals in "Buried for Pleasure." This time it is a 'non-doing' pig that falls in love with the village's pub manager.
The plot also works in that most obvious of red herrings: an escaped lunatic who believes himself to be President Woodrow Wilson. His normal mode of dress is a pince nez, and he must be the only lunatic in literature who declares, as he is captured and led away, "I warn you that if my Fourteen Points are not adopted, Western Europe will be at war again within a decade." Since "Buried for Pleasure" takes place in 1949, his prophecy was correct, although tardy.
We never do find out exactly why Fen is standing for Parliament. One of the other characters challenges him to explain his motives:
"'Well, what on earth...I mean, why are you standing for Parliament? What put the idea into your head?'
"Even to himself Fen's actions were sometimes unaccountable, and he could think of no very convincing reply.
"'It is my wish,' he said sanctimoniously, 'to serve the community.'
"The girl eyed him dubiously.
"'Or at least," he amended, 'that is one of my motives. Besides, I felt I was getting far too restricted in my interests. Have you ever produced a definitive edition of Langland?'
"'Of course not,' she said crossly.
"'I have. I've just finished producing one. It has queer psychological effects. You begin to wonder if you're mad. And the only remedy for that is a complete change of occupation.'"
Read this book not so much for the mystery, but for Fen's final campaign speech when he decides that he doesn't want to get elected after all.
As for the mystery, Crispin ties all of his loose ends together in a climactic automobile chase that involves the lunatic who thinks he's President Wilson, the Cockney pub manager and her non-doing pig, the murderer, a candidate for Parliament, and the rector who is plagued by a poltergeist.
And the poltergeist.
"Buried for Pleasure" is vintage Crispin.