We Could All Use a Screwball Mystery Right Now...

“If you can imagine a plot that has imbibed too much champagne, you’ll have some idea of the giddy pleasures of this classic 1946 mystery…” James Mustich, The 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die

Hi 1000 Bookies, I hope your shelter in place is not getting you down.  If it is, I have a funny comedy/mystery for you to read. This mystery will cheer you up.   Like the slapstick, screw ball comic situations showcased in the novel, so was my progress to reading the book.  Our reading portal brings us to 1938 England at Oxford University, where we again meet Literature Professor and Don, Gervase Fen. 

The Moving Toyshop is the third book written in the Gervase Fen Mystery Series.  The first two books, The Case of the Gilded Fly and Holy Disorders were very good reads.  Of the two I enjoyed Holy Disorders more.  However, The Moving Toyshop is the superior book and I understand why it was included on the 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die.  At 240 pages, the Moving Toyshop is not a long read and it is one of Crispin’s most popular.  In 1964, the story was featured on the British TV Show, The Detective.

The author, Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery, who not only was a writer but also a composer.  The method of the Gervase Fen novels follows a similar trajectory.  There is always a main character who is a colleague, a former student or friend of Gervase Fen.  In The Moving Toyshop, that character is Richard Cadogan.  Our friend Richard is a poet, a famous poet, who begins the book lamenting his boring life.  Isn’t that what most people speak and sigh, they ask for a more exciting life? Richard is heading to his alma mater (Oxford University) and in a series of unfortunate events (including a botched train schedule, and a ride in a truck), he ends up in the borough of Oxford around 1am in the morning.  Richard is looking for a place to stay and stumbles into a store.  The store is still opened or at least unlocked in the hopes of staying there.  The shop he stumbles into is a toy shop.  He cannot find anyone still there and fumbles up stairs only to find a dead body in one of the rooms. 

As he goes to leave to rush to the police, Cadogan is hit over the head and knocked out.  Richard wakes hours later to find himself in a broom closet.  He climbs out of the window, throws up (LOL) and heads to the police.  Richard takes the police back to the premises to find it’s not a toy shop but a grocery store and when they go upstairs there is no body.  As my friends on the tv show Psych say so eloquently, “No Body… No Crime”.   Not believed, Richard has nowhere else to turn but to his old schoolmate, Professor Gervase Fen.  They were not particularly close in school and Fen handles this with all the tact of a seasick crocodile. 

As a character, Gervase Fen reminds me of a cross between Dr. Niles Crane and Dr. Frasier Crane.  He is very smart, very well read, acts very superior, and very persnickety is the word I would use. Gervase has his many idiosyncrasies and is always critical of everyone.  We are introduced to him in this book while he is driving his car…badly.  There is a lot more physical comedy in this story opposed to the first two mysteries which makes reading the story worthwhile.  Richard and Gervase join forces to solve this case.  They go back to the Grocery Store only to end up being accused of shoplifting when they get caught in the back rooms and run away with tins in their pockets. 

There was one difference between this novel and the first two in the series, usually you meet all the characters and suspects in the beginning of the story, this one they are introduced fairly later on.  For example, in Holy Disorders you don’t see Fen until 1/3 of the way through the story.  As in the first two novels there is a lovely female character, a sidekick buddy and lots of nefarious people.  All of the characters are fun, I like the character of Mr. Hoskins the best, the poor guy gets drafted into this nonsense while drinking at the bar (the Mace and the Scepter).  My only great disappointment is that lack of resolution with a potential love story between Sally Carstairs and Richard.  Sally is very beautiful, owned a dalmatian (who sadly is killed) and I wish ended up with Richard.  But sadly that did not happen. 

There are two fantastic scenes in the book.  One is a chase scene out of any screwball comedy.  A runaway suspect is followed by two of our characters, a drunk, half the Oxford Crew Team and two hoodlums through the streets of Oxford.  They end up at an outdoor public bath by the river with naked old professors and poor Ms. Sally being forced to wait outside.  One scene is a chase through an amusement park/arcade.  In fact, The book provided the source for the famous merry-go-round sequence at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.  The story has some great romps in it.

The Moving Toyshop will give you a laugh in these dark times.  Fast, funny, and whimsically winning, the Moving Toyshop is a comic fantasia disguised as a donnish detective story is a quote from James Mustich.  During your isolation at home you are able to obtain this and other Edmund Crispin books on Amazon. 

Keep Reading My Friends!!!!