Helpful Score: 2
Richard Cadogan, a struggling poet, one stormy night takes shelter in an old toyshop, only to stumble upon the dead body of a woman. Later, when he returns with the police, the toyshop is gone and so is the body. The police don't believe his story, so he turns to his friend, amateur detective Gervase Fen, a disarmingly eccentric professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University.
What follows is a clever plot featuring a last will and testament based on Edward Lear's limericks, eccentric characters, witty dialog, non-stop action reaching Keystone Cops proportions, a strong literary element, and fine comic writing. Its hilarious chase scene should be filmed for posterity.
What follows is a clever plot featuring a last will and testament based on Edward Lear's limericks, eccentric characters, witty dialog, non-stop action reaching Keystone Cops proportions, a strong literary element, and fine comic writing. Its hilarious chase scene should be filmed for posterity.
Helpful Score: 1
"The Moving Toyshop," published in 1946, was Crispin's third Gervase Fen mystery. This particular whodunit involves an unusual will, a hunt for five eccentric characters named after the nonsense poems of Edward Lear, and of course, a moving toy shop with a corpse in its upper story. The action begins in the Autumn of 1938, when the poet, Richard Cadogan wangles an advance from his London publisher and sets out for a vacation in Oxford.
An improbable farce and a fun read!
A British mystery written in 1946. A man enters a toyshop through the unlocked door in the middle of the night and finds a body. When he returns later during the day with the police, the shop has suddenly become a grocery shop and no body is found. A series of more deaths puzzles him and his friend, a professor at Oxford, and leads to a chase to corner a murderer. I enjoyed the Oxford setting and the clever mystery.
Thomas F. (hardtack) -
I have to hand it to Crispin. His mystery tales are so well structured, you almost don't see the humor throughout the book. The humor is often in your mind as you imagine the scenes he describes. While reading his books, I often wondered what a movie based on his mysteries would be like. The audience would be laughing while people were being killed on screen. And the dialogue.... If you were to read it out loud your family would wonder about your sanity.
Very enjoyable! I'm glad I have more of his books to read. Fortunately, I can't repost my copy of this one, as it has water damage. This means I'll get to read it again later.
Very enjoyable! I'm glad I have more of his books to read. Fortunately, I can't repost my copy of this one, as it has water damage. This means I'll get to read it again later.
