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Swan Song
Swan Song | Edmund Crispin
4 posts | 4 read | 3 to read
This playful whodunit featuring an Oxford don and a permanently silenced opera singer is a splendidly intricate and superior locked-room mystery (The New York Times). When an opera company gathers in Oxford for the first postwar production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger, its happiness is soon soured by the discovery that the unpleasant Edwin Shorthouse will be singing a leading role. Nearly everyone involved has reason to loathe Shorthouse, but who amongst them has the fiendish ingenuity to kill him in his own locked dressing room? In the course of this entertaining adventure, eccentric Oxford professor and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen has to unravel two murders, cope with the unpredictability of the artistic temperament, and attempt to encourage the course of true love. One of the last exponents of the classical English detective story . . . elegant, literate, and funny. The Times of London [Crispins] books are fast, fun and smart, their hero charming, frivolous, brilliant and badly behaved. New Review
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dodgygothbint
Swan Song | Edmund Crispin
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Pickpick

I really enjoyed this book! It's the second of Crispin's 'Gervase Fen' mysteries that I've read and they've both had me laughing out loud as well as enjoying the intriguing, if rather far-fetched, plots. This is a tale of jealousy and murder in an opera company, with a lot of examination of human absurdity, as well as self-referential asides, brilliant characters, and rather joyful silliness ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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CarolynM
Swan Song | Edmund Crispin
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Pickpick

I hope this golden age mystery qualifies as a cozy, although I can see Gervase Fen shuddering with distaste at the thought. An intriguing mystery with an original twist in the resolution and a thoroughly amusing story from beginning to end. #cozyinthesun no. 4

batsy I love the Gervase Fen books! 5y
Librarybelle I‘m not familiar with it, but the description begins with “a playful whodunnit,” so that sounds like it qualifies. Love the cover! 5y
BooknerdsLife Awww sounds as lovely as your coffee 😍 5y
ferskner I think it counts! Looks great. 5y
76 likes1 stack add4 comments
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Aimeesue
Swan Song | Edmund Crispin
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This is the …fourth? Crispin I've read. Seems like people either love Crispin or hate him, because they're expecting a straight mystery, and that's definitely not what a Gervase Fen book is about. Crispin is to mystery what Doctor Who is to science fiction; if you take them seriously, you'll hate them, because at base, they're farce.

Laura317 This sounds intriguing. 6y
Aimeesue @Laura317 Golden Age mystery. Not as good, mystery-wise, as Sayers or Allingham, but Fen is more FUN. There's some meta-fictional elements as well. Occasionally Fen will reference Crispin, which always amuses me. The end of one mystery was used in a Hitchcock film, too. 6y
CarolynM I love Gervase Fen😍 6y
27 likes3 stack adds3 comments
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Aimeesue
Swan Song | Edmund Crispin
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Deuxième position: Le pibble sûr mes genoux, le lab sûr l‘ottoman. Un peu mieux.
#pibble #pibblespflitsy #dogsoflitsy