Forgotten Book - Holy Disorders

Holy Disorders was Edmund Crispin's second book, written in 1945 and published the following year, but set in wartime, and featuring German spies as well as Gervase Fen. It begins with a young composer called Geoffrey Vintner receiving a bizarre warning not to accept an invitation to travel to a small town called Tolnbridge to play the organ. An equally bizarre telegram from his old friend Fen asks him to buy a butterfly net.

When Geoffrey obediently goes to a department store to purchase the net, he is attacked, only to be rescued by a young man who works there, and whose name, he says, is Henry Fielding. He also reveals that he's a member of the aristocracy. What's more, he accompanies Geoffrey to Tolnbridge to help him find out what on earth is going on.

One organist at Tolnbridge has already bitten the dust, and before long there is another tragedy. Fen is as exuberant as ever, and irritatingly keeps saying that he knows what is happening, while refusing to reveal the truth to Geoffrey or the police. This know-all behaviour was, of course, a feature of Great Detectives - Hercule Poirot was apt to tease in similar fashion - but Fen rather overdoes it.

But that doesn't detract from the enjoyment of a complicated mystery with a startling "least likely person" solution. You don't read Crispin for the characterisation, and the main villain wasn't really believable to my mind, but there is more than adequate compensation in the witty writing. There's even a cluefinder element - footnotes to the closing pages referring the reader to the clues in earlier chapters. Great fun.

The Return of Edmund Crispin and Alexander Wilson

The republication of classic crime novels continues apace with two rather different, attractively produced new series. The first comes from Harper Collins, who are starting to reissue the books of Edmund Crispin in paperback. Three titles have recently appeared: Love Lies Bleeding, The Moving Toyshop, and Holy Disorders. Each book features Crispin's amateur sleuth Gervase Fen, and my understanding is that the rest of Crispin's books are likely to appear in similar editions in due course.

Crispin was a lively and intelligent writer who enjoyed the game-playing aspect of detective fiction, even though he came along at the end of the Golden Age (which is why he is mentioned only in passing in The Golden Age of Murder; alas, had I tried to cover writers like Crispin, Christianna Brand and Dorothy Bowers in detail, the book would have been even weightier.)

Crispin was influenced by the likes of fellow Oxford man, Michael Innes, and John Dickson Carr. His work has always retained an appeal to readers; I recall listening to a very enthusiastic discussion of his work by Susan Moody a while back, which revived my interest in his work. So his books have never been too hard to find; all the same, it's good to see these new editions. Here's my take on The Moving Toyshop.

Alexander Wilson, in contrast, really is a forgotten writer. But perhaps not for much longer. Allison & Busby have set about reprinting his thrillers, with cover artwork in a style eerily reminiscent of the British Library Crime Classics series (though where are the wonderful introductions? Only joking!) Wilson was a spy as well as a writer, and there's a very interesting Wikipedia page about him. The first three titles to appear are: Mystery of Tunnel 51, The Devil's Cocktail, and Wallace of the Secret Service.