Amazon.co.uk Review
The classic crime thrillers of Edmund Crispin are quite unlike any others in their constantly digressing good humour, their smart puzzle-setting and their strong-skewed sense of what is right and fair. In Buried for Pleasure, his don-detective Gervase Fenn comes to the out-of-way village of Sanford Angelorum to stand in a Parliamentary by-election; he has just finished a major piece of academic work and needs diversion. Almost at once, he recognises another guest in the hotel as an incognito police inspector from London, learns of a local woman poisoned by her blackmailer and then Inspector Bussy is killed, seemingly stabbed in the throat by an escaped lunatic. Not especially enjoying the by-election, Fenn takes a hand in the investigation and finds himself caught up with dotty psychiatrists, ecclesiastical poltergeists, lost heirs and a small and unappealing pig. As Jonathan Gash points out in his introduction, it would be a mistake to regard this as merely cosy or merely a romp; the Crispin novels showed what could be done to the detective novel with a bit of style. Fenn is a fascinating detective because we get to know so much of the over-stocked interior of his highly intelligent head. --Roz Kaveney
Review
Rightly elevated to classic status New York Sun Crispin is noted for an ability to embellish clever story lines with Marx Brothers touches New York Times Both the mature and the discerning young choose to pick up one of Crispin's beautifully turned crime novels The Times Crispin isn't in it for the mystery, but for the enigmas Guardian
