The Moving Toyshop (original 1946; edition 1989)

Another favorite mystery writer: Edmund Crispin. This is one of his best and the first of his books that I read. I found a hardbound copy in a remainders sale at the University of Oregon bookstore - the cover art matches what I have. Crispin is a mystery writer who is also quite funny, and some of his stories could be in any era. His sleuth is an Oxford don named Professor Fen, who wears an extraordinary hat and drives a small, noisy red sports car named Lily Christine IV. ( )

The writing is so delightful and witty, the characters so charming, the setting so droll, the set-up so interesting, that one forgives The Moving Toyshop for ultimately being a thoroughly implausible, thoroughly artificial "puzzle" mystery whose solution is considerably less interesting than everything along the way.

Set in the 1940s (give or take), The Moving Toyshop follows a poet from London to Oxford where he finds a dead body above a toyshop, gets knocked over the head, and when he finally returns to the scene of the crime with the police both the body and the toyshop are gone. He engages the eccentric, almost schoolboyish Don Gervase Fen to chase around Oxford dodging the police while solving the crime. Along the way they meet a cast of equally eccentric characters, engage the help of a posse of students, and have several hilarious and scenic chases through Oxford.

Ultimately, much of the deeper mystery about the moving toyshop and the basic motives are settled about halfway through with a short suspect list that ultimately makes its way down to one, without a huge amount of interest in which of the short list actually did it (in part because they're all pretty repugnant). ( )

A romp of a murder mystery through the streets and Colleges of late 1930’s Oxford. I say ‘romp’; there are some nasty bits – the murder itself, of course, and a dog gets killed, which I personally think is worse (but am told I’m Wrong). Crispin never takes himself too seriously, however, and his protagonist, Gervaise Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of the fictitious St Christopher’s, fourth walls like nobody’s business: when he’s locked in a cupboard by the bad guys, he passes the time in thinking up titles for Crispin (“Fen Steps In. A Don Dares Death”) and, when undecided on which way to pursue said bad guys, suggests that, since the book’s being published by Gollancz, they should go left. Plus he likes to play literary guessing games – Unreadable Books (Ulysses, Rasselas), Detestable Characters in Literature (almost everybody in Dostoevsky), and is just about to start on a round of Awful Lines in Shakespeare when the book ends. Part of the plot itself revolves around the limericks of Edward Lear and, all in all, the book’s a perfect joy – with the added joy, if one’s acquainted with Oxford, of being able to map the action as it progresses.

One big ‘harumph!’ – the victim is described as being an “old, deaf lady”. So far, so dastardly. “Of sixty.” Excuse ME?! ( )

Fen seems to be a man of limitless energy and tireless enthusiasm, at least when challenged by an unsolved mystery: only twenty four hours elapse between Richard Cadogan's inadvertent discovery, around midnight, of the murdered Miss Tandy in a flat adjoining a toy shop somewhere along the Iffley Road, and Fen's dramatic capture of the gun-toting murderer on an out-of-control carousel in the nearby Botley fairground. Continued ( )

Very funny in parts, but as a mystery it's a complete mess. There is no investigation - all the revelations are made through chance encounters or events overtaking the protagonist - and the solution to the puzzle is an insult to anticlimaxes. The moving toyshop itself, a Chestertonian concept on the face of it, is absolutely irrelevant to the plot and resolved uninventively. ( )