Crispin, Edmund - Buried for Pleasure (1948)

Review by Nick Fuller

3/5

A whole-time preoccupation with democratic politics, Fen rapidly discovered, is not easily imposed on a humane and civilised mind.

From previous reading and from critical judgement, I had viewed this as the best of the Fen stories. Unfortunately, it is not. Crispin's humour — both through political satire, and through sheer imagination (escaped lunatics, non-doing pigs, renovating inns, vicars and their poltergeists) — is at its best, but the detective story plot, despite a surprising murderer and several new and neat twists on the clichéd blackmail plot, is not Crispin's best. There are no red herrings, no suspects, and the reader is likely to tumble to the murderer's identity. This does not give Fen a chance to shine, as the case is too easy to solve to be given to a detective capable of unravelling complex locked-room murders. Fen's political manoeuvres obviously take precedence in Crispin's mind over Fen's detection.

Note that Detective Inspector Humbleby (who appeared both in this and in Frequent Hearses, as well as in most of the short stories featuring Fen) is introduced here; that the village setting and rustics are good; that Bussy's murder is an effective contrast between the poetic beauty of the night and the horridness of the murder; and that the book is a very funny parody of Gladys Mitchell's When Last I Died.