Sudden Vengeance (Gervase Fen Mysteries) [Paperback]

"On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, / And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates."

Expect that even the most vicious murderer in an Edmund Crispin mystery will quote Dryden or Shakespeare at the drop of a garrote. "Sudden Vengeance" is a fertile setting for this type of classical badinage, since its plot involves the making of a film based on the biography of Alexander Pope. Gervase Fen, Oxford don of English Language and Literature, and amateur detective extraordinaire is hired by the film company as a story consultant, and he is plagued throughout the book by a Scotland Yard detective who is an amateur classics scholar. Fen wants to discuss the murder. Chief Inspector Humbleby wants to talk about the Brontes and Dr. Johnson. Neither one will admit to a less than perfect understanding of either his profession or his hobby, and both despise amateurs. Their encounters keep "Sudden Vengeance" sparkling along right up until its final page. Here is a sample of dialogue, wherein Inspector Humbleby deliberately misunderstands Fen's explanation of the film's subject:

"Based," Fen reiterated irritably, "on the life of Pope."

"The Pope?"

"Pope."

"Now which Pope would that be, I wonder?" said Humbleby, with the air of one who tries to take an intelligent interest in what is going forward. "Pius, or Clement, or--"

Fen stared at him. "Alexander, of course."

"You mean"---Humbleby spoke with something of an effort---"you mean the Borgia?"

All of Crispin's characters are carefully (one might say `crisply') developed, and distinguished for the reader by a quirk or eccentric manner of speech (sometimes Crispin overplays the eccentricity at the expense of realism, especially with his main protagonist-- I do wish Fen would stop expostulating, "Oh, my fur and whiskers!"). Physical description is sketchy. If one of Crispin's characters walked past you in the street, you probably wouldn't recognize him. However, if you were to overhear his conversation with the postman---

And I don't mean to imply that "Sudden Vengeance" is all dialogue and no action. There is one especially harrowing scene where a young woman chases the murderer into a maze in order to learn his identity and then (when reason returns) can't find her way back out again. By the time Fen rescues her, she has endured an experience right out of an M.R. James horror story (in fact, the young woman quotes M.R. James at length while she is traversing the maze - a typical Crispin characteristic).

The mystery surrounding the murderer's identity and motivation is as cleverly convoluted as the maze, and it is equally as hard to get to its heart. Crispin himself wrote and published at least one film script and composed music for several films, so "Sudden Vengeance" is told with the knowledge of a movie industry insider.

If you like vintage British mysteries with a `classical education' and haven't yet discovered the `Professor Fen' novels, then you're in for a treat-- assuming you can find these out-of-print volumes. Here are all nine of the Fen mysteries plus two collections of short stories, in case you want to keep going:

"The Case of the Gilded Fly" ("Obsequies at Oxford"), 1944;
"Holy Disorders," 1945;
"The Moving Toyshop," 1946;
"Swan Song" ("Dead and Dumb"), 1947;
"Love Lies Bleeding," 1948;
"Buried for Pleasure," 1948;
"Frequent Hearses" ("Sudden Vengeance"), 1950;
"The Long Divorce," 1952;
"Beware of the Trains," 1953 (short stories);
"The Glimpses of the Moon," 1978;
"Fen Country," 1979 (short stories).