Another crisp Gervase Fen mystery, set over a Speech Day weekend, that gets down to business with a swiftness and spares us no corpses. Per usual, Fen is a prig and a know-it-all, so the reader really has to like him or let that go in order to enjoy this one (but that's really all of this series); there's a lot of nonsense here and Mr. Crispin should have left off trying to write dialogue for teenage girls, because, woof, but it's an enjoyable read nonetheless. A solid recommend.

This cleverly crafted mystery takes place at a boys' school in Sussex. Crispin's hero, Gervase Fen, has been invited to give the prizes at the school's speech day. Another part of the festivities is s joint production of a Shakespeare play by the school and the local girls' high school.

Things go badly amiss when the leading lady is badly scared two days before the play and disappears the next night. Adding to this are the murders of two teachers.

It's a clever mystery, full of great characters and wonderful description and solved by Fen. I raced through this classic mystery.