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Swan Song

Page history last edited by Jon 12 years, 9 months ago

Crispin, Edmund - Swan Song (1947) aka Dead and Dumb

 

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

This under-rated Crispin is, in fact, one of the best of the lot, with its skilful depiction of an operatic background ("There are few creatures more stupid than the average singer…"); the depth of characterisation (on one hand, the humour created by 'the Master' and his domineering paramour Beatrix Thorn — "in the flesh", as Fen introduces her; and on the other, the pathetic love of Judith Haynes); the humour, caused by ludicrous similes and Fen's outrageous unorthodoxies, especially the scene in the chemist's shop; and the ingenuity of the murder plot—very clever misdirection, even if the gimmick is highly improbable, and the motive weak. All of these, along with Crispin's idiosyncratic cameos of minor characters such as Wilkes (sadly his last appearance, excepting a minor off-page role in The Long Divorce) and the burglar, all go to indicate one thing: Edmund Crispin was not a writer of detective stories. He was a novelist.

 

Note that the book is Crispin's first straight murder mystery since The Case of the Gilded Fly; and that there are similarities in the plot to T.C.O.T. Gilded Fly and to John Dickson Carr's The Three Coffins.

 


Two murders in a nicely symmetrical structure. An English opera company is putting on Die Meistersinger at Oxford. Edwin Shorthouse, the bass baritone, is down to play Sachs. Shorthouse has a voice like an angel, but all his other qualities come from elsewhere. Spurned by Elizabeth Harding, he plots revenge on her new husband Adam Harding, the tenor who plays Walther. Shorthouse also has words with the musical director, George Peacock, and makes a clumsy attempt on the virtue of Judith Haynes, a girl from the chorus. Nobody is particularly upset when Shorthouse turns up dead, but it is the nature of the operation - a classic locked-room puzzle - that intrigues Gervase Fen.

 

There are more rehearsals, gunplay and another death before Fen sorts it all out. Shorthouse's murder is neatly explained but a bit thin on motive; the second killing, by contrast, seemed strongly motivated but fairly implausible. But Crispin and Fen bring it all off neatly in the end, and this edition also has an Introduction by Michael Innes -- what more could you want?

 

Jon.

 

See also http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.com/2011/06/very-palpable-hit.html

 

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