THE CASE OF THE GILDED FLY: A Gervase Fen Mystery - Couverture souple

A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY

As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse - discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin. Crime fiction at its quirkiest and best.

Yseut Haskell, a pretty but spiteful young actress with a talent for destroying men's lives, is found dead in a college room just metres from the office of unconventional Oxford don and amateur detective, Gervase Fen. The victim is found wearing an unusual ring, a reproduction of a piece in the British Museum featuring a gold gilded fly but does this shed any light on her murder? As they delve deeper into Yseut's unhappy life the police soon realise that anyone who knew her would have shot her, but can Fen discover who could have shot her?

Erudite, eccentric and entirely delightful - Before Morse, Oxford's murders were solved by Gervase Fen, the most unpredictable detective in classic crime fiction.

Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery, an English crime writer and composer. He graduated from St John's College, Oxford, in 1943, with a BA in modern languages, having for two years been its organist and choirmaster. From 1943 to 1945 he taught at Shrewsbury School and in 1944 published the first of nine Gervase Fen novels, The Case of the Gilded Fly. He became a well respected reviewer of crime, writing for the Sunday Times from 1967 until his death in 1978. He also composed the music for many of the Carry On films.

From the original editions: 'Edmund Crispin's recreations are swimming, excessive smoking, Shakespeare, the operas of Wagner and Strauss, idleness and cats. His antipathies are dogs, the French Film, the Renaissance of the British Film, psychoanalysis, the psychological-realistic crime story and the contemporary theatre.'