The Moving Toyshop

enjoyed it.
good read.

Thank you Net Galley. I loved this book when I first read it and loved it now as I re-read it on my kindle. Edmund Crispin is one of the best detective story authors I have read and Gervase Fen one of the best "detectives". I have read several of Crispin's books in print and was thrilled to see one in e-format. I read it over the weekend and was renewed. Looking forward to more in e-format.

This is a golden era classic comic crime novel set in 1938 Oxford from the series featuring Gervase Fen, an Oxford professor, who has a penchant for investigating the strange and the odd. This is the third and I have to say that I loved it. Poet Richard Cadogan is on vacation in Oxford, and is walking around at night when he spots a toy shop with an open door. His curiousity overwhelms him, and he finds himself going into the toy shop. And would you believe it, he spies the dead body of a murdered woman. He returns in the morning with the police, and there is a slight problem. There is now no toy shop and no dead body. Instead, in its place is a grocery shop.

A perplexed Richard calls on our amateur detective, Gervase Fen, and the two of them start pulling at the threads of this bizarre mystery. They riff really well off each other, and their relationship with each other is a joy to behold. They find themselves travelling all round the city, encountering weird rich women, a lawyer to beware of, legacies, and, of course, have a maiden to protect. There is plenty of humour throughout the novel. The writing is wonderful and there are literary quotations and word play scattered throughout. It is artfully plotted, more than a trifle bonkers and a great deal of fun. It might also improve your vocabulary! Providing you are not looking for logic, this is a delightful classic crime read. Recommended. Thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.

An ARC honest review for Bloomsbury USA books via NetGalley.

What do you do when you are a poet and crave adventure? You go to Oxford, as Richard Cadogan does.

After getting stranded at a railway station just outside Oxford very late in the evening. Cadogan decides to make his way into Oxford on foot. Getting a lift from a lorry driver to the edge of Oxford, Cadogan stumbles on a open door at a Toyshop and a dead body inside.

After being knocked out and locked in a cupboard, Cadogan escapes to inform the police of the crime...only no toyshop and no dead body!

Accused of theft, and chased through the streets of Oxford. Cadogan finds shelter in his old college grounds and his old class mate Gervase Fen's study.

Gervase likes nothing better than a good mystery. So the chase for a murderer is on!

The Moving Toyshop is the classic murder mystery from the pen of Edmund Crispin, and a must read for anyone who likes the older murder/mysteries.

I read this book many years ago and really enjoyed it. Time change and it is really interesting that reading it now I found the book slow. There is very little mystery, but the hunt dominates the story. It is quite a humorous ride and I did enjoy it again. It is a great example of the way books were written, the language, people and culture were depicted in the 1900, I enjoyed it again after I got used to the pace of it

This novel is such fun! I am not through with it yet and I have never reviewed a book before I was finished but I saw that this was going to be published in a few days and I wanted to recommend it highly. Cadogan and Fen are a hilarious duo! The adventures they are having are action-packed and completely enjoyable. My favorite part so far is when the two chase someone they need to interview into Oxford's Choir practice and join right in to the director's dismay! I love the setting and can't wait to read the rest of the books in the series!

Having read 'Love Lies Bleeding' in the Gervase Fen mystery series, I thought I knew what to expect. To some extent, I was proved correct; some wry humour, farcical situations, a complex murder, a whole host of red herrings and a satisfying (if complicated) denouement. This one is set in Oxford where a poet stumbles upon a murder victim in a toyshop, only to return next day to find that the toyshop has vanished, along with the body. The poet, Cadogan, along with Fen then have to solve the murder without any evidence of its occurrence.

The start of the story rattles along quite merrily in the way I expected, but I will admit to finding the latter parts of the novel slightly less engaging; although I loved the gang of Blues who join the crusade, some of the chase scenes seemed a bit drawn-out and unnecessary. I also found the humour (one of the things that drew me to 'Love lies Bleeding') was not as evident as I'd hoped.

Overall, there is plenty to enjoy here, but I'd say that I didn't find this as strong as other books in the series. Still well worth a read if you love murder mysteries without the gore and are prepared to suspend disbelief a little!

This comic crime novel was first published in 1946 and there’s no doubt that it feels dated. It features Oxford don and detective Gervase Fen. One night his friend the poet Cadogan discovers the dead body of an elderly lady in a toyshop. When the pair go back the next day the toyshop has disappeared and in its place is a grocer’s. What follows is a madcap and farcical adventure to discover the culprit, encompassing all sorts of unlikely chases and shoot-outs, some eccentric characters and it’s all rather ludicrous. But it’s also good fun, with some clever tongue-in-cheek humour and various literary allusions some of which I got and many I suspect I didn’t. Of its time, yes, but still with a certain appeal for a contemporary audience, especially those who enjoy classic Golden Era British crime.

It has taken me many years to begin to undo the habits authors like Edmund Crispin set me into. My motto has been for many years that of <I>The West Wing's</i> Jed Bartlett: never say in one word what you can say in one hundred. I also follow <i>Dead Poets Society's</i> Mr. Keating's advice to avoid common phrasing. So when Edmund Crispin trots out words like "steatopygic" or "suilline", I'm content (even if I have to look them up). And when someone not only explained, but "He explained at great length. He explained with a sense of righteous indignation and frustration of spirit" – well, that's a kindred spirit, that is. And when Fen uses variations on the White Rabbit's exclamations, I sigh and know that yes, Crispin is in part to blame for the fact that I don't speak – or write – like anyone else I know. It takes great concentration to write an email shorter than a thousand words (or in one draft).

Maybe books like this are one reason I didn't swear for a good portion of my life (at least until I started driving regularly). "'– you,' Mr Sharman said viciously."

Maybe books like this are one reason I love a pretty simile. I love an "open window where the porter leaned, like a princess enchanted within some medieval fortalice". And "Wordsworth resembled a horse with powerful convictions".

And I don't read like anyone else I know, not in "real life" at least. That's why blogs and book-centric sites are so valuable – I know there are people out there whose standards are – well, Edmund Crispin high and not Stephanie Meyer high.

"'Sorry. It was a quotation from Pope.'
"'I don't care who it was a quotation from. It's really rather rude to quote when you know I shan't understand. Like talking about someone in a language they don't know.'"
- I wonder if that's a backhanded slap at Dorothy L. Sayers and Lord Peter's habit of pulling out mass tonnages of quotes, often in random languages. In the only other Crispin I've read in recent years, <I>The Case of the Gilded Fly</i>, there was a remark I very definitely took as such. (I wonder if the "speaking disrespectfully of the immortal Jane" was indicative of the author's real feelings.

It felt very much like the moving toyshop of the title was merely a vehicle (so to speak) for Fen to sail through and show off his effortless brilliance. And for various characters to break the third wall with disconcertingly hilarious references to the author, the publisher, and the fact that they're not, technically, real persons. ("'Let's go left,' Cadogan suggested. 'After all, Gollancz is publishing this book.'" That would have flown about fourteen miles over my head when I originally read this, lo those many years ago.) The flippancy flows fast and glittery – and then when you least expect it come a deeper stretch that achieve deadly seriousness. "Euthanasia, Cadogan thought: they all regard it as that, and not as wilful slaughter, not as the violent cutting-off of an irreplaceable compact of passion and desire and affection and will; not as a thrust into unimagined and illimitable darkness."

'Sauve qui peut', mes amis – save yourself if you can. If you want to sound like everyone else, it's probably best not to steep yourself in clever, eccentric, carelessly witty British Golden Age mysteries. Oh, my ears and whiskers, it's not easy fending off the philistine.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

This book was a delight. Excellent prose, British wit, and a puzzling mystery to solve.