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The Long Divorce

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Edmund Crispin is not known as a writer who features animals in his mysteries. Yet in "Swan Song," he gave us the bald, pub parrot that recited Heine in the original German.

In "Love Lies Bleeding," Mr. Merrythought, the ancient, slovenly bloodhound thwarted a double murder.

"The Long Divorce" introduces Lavender, the cat who sees Martians. (Either you have a cat who sees Martians---there is one perched on my printer right now, staring off into what humans refer to as 'empty space'---or else you will have to take Mr. Crispin's word that such perceptive cats exist.) Lavender, the marmalade-colored tomcat with unusual visual powers is instrumental in the capture of a murderer.

Murder is really secondary to the story of a village plagued by an anonymous letter-writer. Some of the letters are merely obscene. Others are poisonously factual.

Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford is importuned by an old friend to expose the anonymous letter-writer. And so Fen, microscopically disguised under the name of 'Mr. Datchery' (borrowed from Charles Dickens's "The Mystery of Edmund Drood") takes himself off to his friend's bucolic village.

"To an obbligato of bird-song Mr Datchery marched beneath a bright sky towards Cotton Abbas. And he carolled lustily, to the distress of all animate nature, as he walked....The directions given him at Twelford had been explicit. But since he believed himself to possess an infallible bump of locality, he was soon tempted to modify them with a variety of short cuts, and after about three miles he discovered, much to his indignation, that he was lost."

Is that or is that not Fen to the life?

"The Long Divorce" (1952) is eighth in Crispin's series of mysteries starring his literate, cynical, sometimes bumptious amateur detective. It is also a comedy of rural, post-war England. The characters are dead-on: the army veteran who is trying to stop smoking; the female physician who is struggling to build a practice in a conservative backwater; the teenager who both loves and is ashamed of her obnoxious, money-grubbing father.

Many of the mystery writers of the 1940s and 1950s were guilty of creating one-dimensional female stereotypes, or going off on the occasional anti-feminist rant. Margery Allingham, Rex Stout, and John Dickson Carr come readily to mind as producing examples of this type of writing. Crispin also creates the occasional stereotype, especially in his early novels and some of his short stories, but the characters in "The Long Divorce" are fully and fascinatingly realized---especially the women (okay, okay---except for the innkeeper's wife and the sluttish barmaid. But they are very minor players).

Crispin also works in an ongoing and thoughtful dialogue on suicide, and there is a hair-raising scene where Fen just manages to prevent a young girl from killing herself.

"The Long Divorce" is a classical Golden-Age British mystery, a thoughtful essay on suicide, and a marvelous, occasionally hilarious study of the rural English character. I feel the same frustration that Fen felt, when at story's end he reveals his true name to a gathering of the book's characters---and very few of them have heard of him.

Why isn't Fen at least as well-known as Lord Peter or Miss Marple or Nero Wolfe? He certainly deserves to be.

Edmund Crispin is not known as a writer who features animals in his mysteries. Yet in "Swan Song," he gave us the bald, pub parrot that recited Heine in the original German.

In "Love Lies Bleeding," Mr. Merrythought, the ancient, slovenly bloodhound thwarted a double murder.

"The Long Divorce" introduces Lavender, the cat who sees Martians. (Either you have a cat who sees Martians---there is one perched on my printer right now, staring off into what humans refer to as `empty space'---or else you will have to take Mr. Crispin's word that such perceptive cats exist.) Lavender, the marmalade-colored tomcat with unusual visual powers is instrumental in the capture of a murderer.

Murder is really secondary to the story of a village plagued by an anonymous letter-writer. Some of the letters are merely obscene. Others are poisonously factual.

Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford is importuned by an old friend to expose the anonymous letter-writer. And so Fen, microscopically disguised under the name of `Mr. Datchery' (borrowed from Charles Dickens's "The Mystery of Edmund Drood") takes himself off to his friend's bucolic village.

"To an obbligato of bird-song Mr Datchery marched beneath a bright sky towards Cotton Abbas. And he carolled lustily, to the distress of all animate nature, as he walked....The directions given him at Twelford had been explicit. But since he believed himself to possess an infallible bump of locality, he was soon tempted to modify them with a variety of short cuts, and after about three miles he discovered, much to his indignation, that he was lost."

Is that or is that not Fen to the life?

"The Long Divorce" (1952) is eighth in Crispin's series of mysteries starring his literate, cynical, sometimes bumptious amateur detective. It is also a comedy of rural, post-war England. The characters are dead-on: the army veteran who is trying to stop smoking; the female physician who is struggling to build a practice in a conservative backwater; the teenager who both loves and is ashamed of her obnoxious, money-grubbing father.

Many of the mystery writers of the 1940s and 1950s were guilty of creating one-dimensional female stereotypes, or going off on the occasional anti-feminist rant. Margery Allingham, Rex Stout, and John Dickson Carr come readily to mind as producing examples of this type of writing. Crispin also creates the occasional stereotype, especially in his early novels and some of his short stories, but the characters in "The Long Divorce" are fully and fascinatingly realized---especially the women (okay, okay---except for the innkeeper's wife and the sluttish barmaid. But they are very minor players).

Crispin also works in an ongoing and thoughtful dialogue on suicide, and there is a hair-raising scene where Fen just manages to prevent a young girl from killing herself.

"The Long Divorce" is a classical Golden-Age British mystery, a thoughtful essay on suicide, and a marvelous, occasionally hilarious study of the rural English character. I feel the same frustration that Fen felt, when at story's end he reveals his true name to a gathering of the book's characters---and very few of them have heard of him.

Why isn't Fen at least as well-known as Lord Peter or Miss Marple or Nero Wolfe? He certainly deserves to be.

Edmund Crispin is a fabulous English mystery writer who is not well known (at least in the U.S.) but deserves to be. He's literate without being pedantic, although a classical education will help you appreciate his humor (for example, a character who has taken the pseudonym of Mr. Datchery from a character in a Dickens novel). I will admit that one or two of his works are just a little bit too stylized for my enjoyment -- I think he's joking about things in Britain at the time he wrote that I don't understand. But this one -- although it is set in the post-WWII period and very topical -- has a puzzle mystery at its center that is timeless. The problem for the reader is, how could a very likable character NOT have committed the murder, given the evidence?

The setting is a pretty little English village, made less pretty by the presence of someone sending anonymous letters that are very distressing to the recipient. One letter drives the recipient to suicide, so it is particularly important that the sender be caught and stopped. Then there's a murder, which appears to be related to the letters -- or maybe not.

If you haven't discovered Crispin yet, I highly recommend him. My favorite by him remains The Moving Toyshop, but this one is also excellent.

This

As always Gervaise Fen is whimsical and funny. In this book he enters a tiny English village under another name as he sets out to discover the authorship of some very unlovely poisoned pen letters. Inevitably, these letters lead up to a murder, and Fen is there to aid the local constabulary in their investigation. The funny part in this book is the cat called "Lavender". The book weaves in and around this wonderful cat who is always on the hunt for "Martians" in the house of Colonol Babbington. Although, I figured out the murderer fairly quickly, I still enjoyed the getting there. And Mr. Crispin introduces a parallel storyline that may or may not have had something to do with the initial poison pen letters. That kept me guessing. Wonderful characters, and a wonderful, sleepy little village where lots is happening below the radar so to speak.

Edmund Crispin is not known as a writer who features animals in his mysteries. Yet in "Swan Song," he gave us the bald, pub parrot that recited Heine in the original German.

In "Love Lies Bleeding," Mr. Merrythought, the ancient, slovenly bloodhound thwarted a double murder.

"The Long Divorce" introduces Lavender, the cat who sees Martians. (Either you have a cat who sees Martians---there is one perched on my printer right now, staring off into what humans refer to as `empty space'---or else you will have to take Mr. Crispin's word that such perceptive cats exist.) Lavender, the marmalade-colored tomcat with unusual visual powers is instrumental in the capture of a murderer.

Murder is really secondary to the story of a village plagued by an anonymous letter-writer. Some of the letters are merely obscene. Others are poisonously factual.

Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford is importuned by an old friend to expose the anonymous letter-writer. And so Fen, microscopically disguised under the name of `Mr. Datchery' (borrowed from Charles Dickens's "The Mystery of Edmund Drood") takes himself off to his friend's bucolic village.

"To an obbligato of bird-song Mr Datchery marched beneath a bright sky towards Cotton Abbas. And he carolled lustily, to the distress of all animate nature, as he walked....The directions given him at Twelford had been explicit. But since he believed himself to possess an infallible bump of locality, he was soon tempted to modify them with a variety of short cuts, and after about three miles he discovered, much to his indignation, that he was lost."

Is that or is that not Fen to the life?

"The Long Divorce" (1952) is eighth in Crispin's series of mysteries starring his literate, cynical, sometimes bumptious amateur detective. It is also a comedy of rural, post-war England. The characters are dead-on: the army veteran who is trying to stop smoking; the female physician who is struggling to build a practice in a conservative backwater; the teenager who both loves and is ashamed of her obnoxious, money-grubbing father.

Many of the mystery writers of the 1940s and 1950s were guilty of creating one-dimensional female stereotypes, or going off on the occasional anti-feminist rant. Margery Allingham, Rex Stout, and John Dickson Carr come readily to mind as producing examples of this type of writing. Crispin also creates the occasional stereotype, especially in his early novels and some of his short stories, but the characters in "The Long Divorce" are fully and fascinatingly realized---especially the women (okay, okay---except for the innkeeper's wife and the sluttish barmaid. But they are very minor players).

Crispin also works in an ongoing and thoughtful dialogue on suicide, and there is a hair-raising scene where Fen just manages to prevent a young girl from killing herself.

"The Long Divorce" is a classical Golden-Age British mystery, a thoughtful essay on suicide, and a marvelous, occasionally hilarious study of the rural English character. I feel the same frustration that Fen felt, when at story's end he reveals his true name to a gathering of the book's characters---and very few of them have heard of him.

Why isn't Fen at least as well-known as Lord Peter or Miss Marple or Nero Wolfe? He certainly deserves to be.