I had wanted to meet this author for a long time, one of those creators who a little later would have been labeled as cursed, would have ended up transcending even today with greater force, in the wake of others like himself Edgar Allan Poe; to which Crispin somehow paid homage through his protagonist Gervase Fen and his similarities (not lacking in a sieve of hilarity) with Auguste Dupin.
And that Edmund Cripin could make merits to be marked as a fatal author, with that tragic aura that captivates readers. His firm dedication to alcohol guided him towards his anticipated end between a passion for literature and that sense of decadent wear and tear of every writer turned into a Dorian Gray in front of the mirror or the canvas of his work.
The point is that few narrators reconcile this fascination of the XNUMXth century criminal genre (fiercely paying homage to Agatha Christie) to adapt it to his transforming imaginary loaded even with humor. And curiously, it is now when his reissues take up new flights towards the rediscovery of the prolific genius in the literary and the musical, in the fictional and in extensive collections of stories.
Edmund Crispin's Top 3 Recommended Books
Buried for pleasure
There was something transgressor, disruptive and disturbing intrusiveness in the figure of a Gervase Fen willing to unravel quixotic mistakes in the English way, as if influenced by Sherlock Holmes readings and emboldened by that sense of fiction extended to life.
And perhaps that is why it has its particular magnetism and its endless creative space for its author. Because in the profane character of Fen, in the self-taught modus operandi all kinds of new possibilities emerge for a criminal genre that even in the middle of the XNUMXth century drank from the even esoteric aspect of death in pioneers like Poe or Lovecraft. Precedent of the imaginary that would later assault Tom sharpeEdumun Crispin rambled with a point of magnetic strangeness between humor and the horror of crime. Fed up with boring university life, eccentric amateur professor and detective Gervase Fen decides to take a break and move to the remote and nondescript town of Sanford Angelorum, in the heart of the English countryside, to run for Parliament.
But Fen quickly discovers that appearances can be deceiving, and he plunges into a dark blackmail plot that leads to a murder mystery. As his nascent political career ceases to provide him with satisfactions, Fen focuses all his energies on solving the mystery, but, hardly realizing it, ends up trapped in a bewildering web where he runs into eccentric psychiatrists, a priest trying to tame a poltergeists, lunatics running naked in the fields, beautiful women, and a somewhat deranged pig. A new installment of the adventures of the immortal and ingenious Oxford professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen.
Murder in the Cathedral
There is always a component of predictable chance in the cases that hang over whoever our protagonists are in a mystery plot. Wherever Poirot, Holmes or even Carvalho went, the forces of evil seemed to conspire not to give our heroes possible rest. Even more so in the case of a Gervase Fen, since it was he himself who had entered the wolf's mouth for pleasure.
Wherever Fen goes, things happen, with that easy intuition of gender and that impossible discernment of consequences ... The fussy professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen has left his beloved Oxford University for the summer to go to the seaside town of Tolnbridge, where he plans to spend your vacation quietly. He is armed with a net for insects, since he plans to dedicate himself to the art of entomology. But the calm and tranquility do not last long.
The town is shocked by the mysterious murder of the organist of the cathedral. The musician in question had no known enemies and his work in the church was harmless, so the police are not able to find a suspect. Could it be the conspiracy of some German spies? Or perhaps the consequence of the covens that, according to rumors, have been practiced in those parts since the seventeenth century?
As ingenious as Agatha Christie and as hilarious as PG Wodehouse, Edmund Crispin, one of the masters of the English detective novel, presents us in "Murder in the Cathedral" a new mystery full of eccentric characters, ghosts who are not, teenagers fond of black masses and Nazi spies.
The mystery of the golden fly
With this novel began the series of the pseudo-inspector Gervase Fen. And perhaps in the lack of definition of the role of the teacher who became an improvised policeman, the plot puzzles even the author himself at times.
In later installments the thing is consolidated and the quixotic perception of Fen gives him an air of a strange hero, an atypical idol that precisely in his dislocation tunes in with any reader who dares to put himself in his skin, being the same layman in the matter of art to kill and to die ... Theater companies are always abuzz with gossip. But few are as intriguing as the one currently performing at Oxford.
The young and lethal Yseut, a somewhat mediocre and malicious actress, is the center of attention, although her main talent is to destroy the lives of the men around her. Until she is found dead under strange circumstances. Fortunately, behind the scenes is the eccentric Professor Gervase Fen, who finds more pleasure in solving crimes than in teaching English literature. And the more he investigates the case, the more he realizes that everyone who knew Yseut would have been a candidate to assassinate her; but will Fen be able to find out who actually did it?
