Rating: 
Summary: Not his best plot by a long shot!
Review: but without the charismatic Perry Mason. I thought the summary blurb sounded intriguing, and as far as mystery set-ups go- a disappearing body and no trace of the murder venue- were quite good. However, the protagonists were a bit stiff, and they were not that well developed. The pay-off was a bit weak and sometimes it was hard to follow which characters were being discussed. The story had lots of potential but was ultimately just okay.....
Rating: 
Summary: They don't write them like they used to
Review: I found nine Edumund Crispin novels bundled three to a book and bought all three (nine mysteries). To say "well-written" is an understatement. They are witty, clever, surprising and best of all, entertaining. These thick tales hail from a time when ideas propelled a story - no bad language, vivid sex scenes, inordiante violence. They are works of beautiful, well-written prose [by a church organist yet!] If you like academic settings (think of Dorothy Sayers) you will love Crispin's stores
Rating: 
Summary: Dated comic fantasy mystery
Review: I'd have to say I enjoyed it, but the plot is complete farce and some of the humor is ponderous and out-dated. For example the speech of the lower classes is transcribed phonetically for comic effect (The English upper classes being assumed to speak without accents). Literary references are dragged in coyly. It demands a reader with tolerance and anglophilia. I picked it up because Amazon's thought-reading machine recommended it to purchasers of Caudwell. Michael Innes also used to do this kind of thing.
Rating:
Summary: Whimsical, but Dated
Review: Sort of what I guess would be called a "whimsical" murder mystery. Set in '30s Oxford, an eminent poet stumbles across a dead woman in a toyshop late at night, but is knocked unconscious. When he goes to the police the next day to report the murder, the body and toyshop are both missing! What follows is a somewhat interesting mystery with a vedy, vedy, dry British wit about it. I gather this is considered something of a classic, however it is so dated I doubt it will not survive my generation (I'm 28).
Rating:
Summary: "a thousand, thousand Limey things lived on and so did I."
Review: The critic Anthony Boucher once described the British writer and composer, Edmund Crispin (pseudonym for Robert Bruce Montgomery) as a "master of fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek mystery novels, a blend of John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes, M.R. James, and the Marx Brothers.""The Moving Toyshop," published in 1946, was Crispin's third Gervase Fen mystery. This particular whodunit involves an unusual will, a hunt for five eccentric characters named after the nonsense poems of Edward Lear, and of course, a moving toy shop with a corpse in its upper story. The action begins in the Autumn of 1938, when the poet, Richard Cadogan wangles an advance from his London publisher and sets out for a vacation in Oxford. The reader begins to realize the oddity of the journey he has embarked upon with the poet, when Cadogan hitches a ride with truck driver who quotes Coleridge ("a thahsand, thahsand slimy things lived on and so did I.") but prefers D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Somebody's Lover." We're entering Fen Country now, where even the truck drivers and police detectives are amateur literary critics, and our detective, Gervase Fen is the Oxford don of English Language and Literature. Dialogue fizzes with cynical witticisms and literary allusions when Fen and the poet, Cadogan go at it, or when Fen takes on any of a number of amateur classicists who populate "The Moving Toyshop." All of Crispin's Fen mysteries can be read with pleasure for the dialogue alone. This particular book also has a full cast of British eccentrics, including the five Edward Lear characters (one of whom is a murderer). Here is your first limerick-clue: "There was an Old Person of Mold who shrank from sensations of Cold; so he purchased some muffs, some furs, and some fluffs, and wrapped himself up from the cold." Racket through the streets (and sometimes the lawns) of Oxford in Fen's battered, red roadster, Lily Christine III! Make up limericks and shout them out to passing scholars! Join the hunt for the missing toyshop, the corpse, and the murderer! You will enjoy a sometimes farcical, always exhilarating ride. "The Moving Toyshop" is Crispin on his own home turf (he was educated at St. John's College, Oxford), and at the top of his classical form.
Rating:
Summary: "a thousand, thousand Limey things lived on and so did I."
Review: The critic Anthony Boucher once described the British writer and composer, Edmund Crispin (pseudonym for Robert Bruce Montgomery) as a "master of fast-paced, tongue-in-cheek mystery novels, a blend of John Dickson Carr, Michael Innes, M.R. James, and the Marx Brothers." "The Moving Toyshop," published in 1946, was Crispin's third Gervase Fen mystery. This particular whodunit involves an unusual will, a hunt for five eccentric characters named after the nonsense poems of Edward Lear, and of course, a moving toy shop with a corpse in its upper story. The action begins in the Autumn of 1938, when the poet, Richard Cadogan wangles an advance from his London publisher and sets out for a vacation in Oxford. The reader begins to realize the oddity of the journey he has embarked upon with the poet, when Cadogan hitches a ride with truck driver who quotes Coleridge ("a thahsand, thahsand slimy things lived on and so did I.") but prefers D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Somebody's Lover." We're entering Fen Country now, where even the truck drivers and police detectives are amateur literary critics, and our detective, Gervase Fen is the Oxford don of English Language and Literature. Dialogue fizzes with cynical witticisms and literary allusions when Fen and the poet, Cadogan go at it, or when Fen takes on any of a number of amateur classicists who populate "The Moving Toyshop." All of Crispin's Fen mysteries can be read with pleasure for the dialogue alone. This particular book also has a full cast of British eccentrics, including the five Edward Lear characters (one of whom is a murderer). Here is your first limerick-clue: "There was an Old Person of Mold who shrank from sensations of Cold; so he purchased some muffs, some furs, and some fluffs, and wrapped himself up from the cold." Racket through the streets (and sometimes the lawns) of Oxford in Fen's battered, red roadster, Lily Christine III! Make up limericks and shout them out to passing scholars! Join the hunt for the missing toyshop, the corpse, and the murderer! You will enjoy a sometimes farcical, always exhilarating ride. "The Moving Toyshop" is Crispin on his own home turf (he was educated at St. John's College, Oxford), and at the top of his classical form.
Rating:
Summary: A classic from the Golden Age of mystery fiction
Review: The Moving Toyshop takes the classic puzzle of the locked room and turns it inside out. A struggling poet, defeated one stormy night by British Railway's unfathomable time-tables, takes shelter in an old toyshop, only to stumble upon the body of a woman inside. But when he returns there with the police, the toyshop has gone and in its place is a grocery shop. It sounds like a story from Ray Bradbury, but this mystery is caused by very common human greed. Edmund Crispin was the pen-name of composer Bruce Montgomery. British movie fans will recognize his name as the creator of the music for the Carry On comedy series. Crispin is one of the mystery writers from the Golden Age of mystery fiction between the wars whose works have stood the test of time. It's a pity that so many of them are currently out of print. Where American writers specialized in hard-boiled detectives, like Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Dashiel Hammett's Sam Spade, the British fiction of the period preferred its heroes to be languid, educated and world-weary. It goes without saying that they spoke several languages, including French and Latin, were familiar with classical music and literature, and hedonistically fond of cigarettes, whisky and good port. The Moving Toyshop has remained a favourite of classical mystery fiction fans, because it incorporates all of the best features of its genre. The amateur detective is Gervase Fen, a disarmingly eccentric professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University. The narrator in this story is a querulous, but biddable poet, a cross between Conan Doyle's Dr Watson and Douglas Adams' Arthur Dent. The conversations concern bad literature and Oxford dons, and usually take place in a comfortable Oxford pub. And the villains escape on bicycles.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining romp around Oxford
Review: This is a fun read; definitely a Whodunnit, but Crispin's work is a lot more thoughtful than others of this genre. Lots of running around with an odd sort of eccentrics and very much in the British cozy style set in pre-WWII 20th century. If you enjoy dry humor, literature and puzzles -- along with old movies and nostalgia, you will enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Very Enjoyable
Review: This is probably the best of the Gervase Fen mysteries. All of the Fen mysteries are entertaining. The principal character, Gervase Fen, is an eccentric Oxford professor and successful amateur detective. All of them are marked by clever plotting, often with a literary element, and fine comic writing. This novel features a particularly clever plot, probably the best character development of all the Fen novels, and above all, great wit. It contains the comic chase scene to end all comic chase scenes.
This book, in an odd way, is also prescient. One of the characters is a middle-aged, somewhat dissatisfied, and prominent English poet. The book is dedicated to the author's good friend, Philip Larkin, and at the time of publication, both Larkin and the author must have been young men. Larkin went on to become the best known English poet of his generation and several of his best poems are about the dissatisfactions of middle age.
Rating:
Summary: Very Enjoyable
Review: This is probably the best of the Gervase Fen mysteries. All of the Fen mysteries are entertaining. The principal character, Gervase Fen, is an eccentric Oxford professor and successful amateur detective. All of them are marked by clever plotting, often with a literary element, and fine comic writing. This novel features a particularly clever plot, probably the best character development of all the Fen novels, and above all, great wit. It contains the comic chase scene to end all comic chase scenes.
This book, in an odd way, is also prescient. One of the characters is a middle-aged, somewhat dissatisfied, and prominent English poet. The book is dedicated to the author's good friend, Philip Larkin, and at the time of publication, both Larkin and the author must have been young men. Larkin went on to become the best known English poet of his generation and several of his best poems are about the dissatisfactions of middle age.
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