Three Professor Fen Mysteries – Edmund Crispin Free Audiobook

Written by Edmund Crispin
Read by Stephen Thorne
Unabridged

*The Moving Toyshop* [6 hours 51 mins, CD] 1946
Richard Cadogan, poet and would-be bon vivant, arrives for what he thinks will be a relaxing holiday in the city of dreaming spires (Oxford). Late one night, however, he discovers the dead body of an elderly woman lying in a toyshop and is coshed on the head. When he comes to, he finds that the toyshop has disappeared and been replaced with a grocery store. The police are understandably skeptical of this tale but Richard’s former schoolmate, Gervase Fen (Oxford Professor of English Language and Literature), knows that truth is stranger than fiction (in fiction, at least). Soon the intrepid duo is careening around town in hot pursuit of clues but just when they think they understand what has happened, the disappearing toyshop mystery takes a sharp turn…

*Holy Disorders* [8 Hours 11 mins, CD] 1945
First published in 1945 “Holy Disorders” takes Oxford don and part time detective, Gervase Fen to the town of Tolnbridge, where he is happily bounding around with a butterfly net until the cathedral organist is murdered, giving Fen the chance to play sleuth. The man didn’t have an enemy in the world, and even his music was inoffensive: could he have fallen foul of a nest of German spies or of the local coven of witches, ominously rumored to have been practicing since the 17th century? Tracking down the answer pleases Fen immensely – only the reader will have a better time.

*Love Lies Bleeding* [10 hours 22 mins, CD] 1948
Taut and clever, “Love Lies Bleeding” revolves around events which begin at the Castrevenford Schools, separate boys and girls institutions where small disturbances have surprising ramifications. Gervase Fen, the Oxford Professor of Language and Literature, who has been called in to speak for the schools’ Speech Day by the Headmaster, an old university acquaintance, is soon in the thick of a mystery which grows deadlier as it becomes more inexplicable. Was young Brenda Boyce assaulted, and, if so, by whom? Who has broken into the chemistry laboratory, and what have they stolen? And what, if anything, is worth the risk of committing murder? As Fen pursues the increasingly convoluted path toward the truth, he discovers happenings more convoluted than any play.

Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery, (usually credited as Bruce Montgomery) (1921-1978) an English crime writer and composer. His novels feature the Oxford don Gervase Fen, who is the Professor of English at the university and fellow of St Christopher’s College, a fictional institution that Crispin locates next to St John’s College. Fen is an eccentric, sometimes absent-minded, character reportedly based on the Oxford professor W. E. Moore. The whodunit novels have complex plots and fantastic, somewhat unbelievable solutions, including examples of the locked room mystery. They are written in a humorous, literary and sometimes farcical style and contain frequent references to English literature, poetry, and music. Crispin is considered by many to be one of the last great exponents of the British ‘classic’ crime mystery.