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Swan Song (Gervase Fen, #4)

Edmund Crispin

Start date: September 15, 2022

Finish date: October 8, 2022

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Aug 23, 2019 Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore rated it really liked it

Shelves: mystery, england, murder, edmund-crispin

An opera company is rehearsing Die Meistersinger in Oxford. One of the leads Edward Shorthouse is a truly unpleasant man with nearly everyone in the company (even in his own family) having some reason to loathe him, even to get rid of him. But when someone actually does, it falls to the eccentric Oxford Don Gervase Fen, friends with another of the actors Adam Langley to solve the case which isn’t what it appears at first glance. This was my first Crispin book and I enjoyed it more than I expecte ...more

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Jul 12, 2011 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, academic-mystery, vintage-mystery, mystery

I do love me an academic mystery. And Edmund Crispin's delightful series starring Gervase Fen--the Oxford don and quirky amateur detective--is a marvelous example of academic mysteries done right. There is witty, sparkling dialogue. There is intellectual name-dropping--"There goes C. S. Lewis," said Fen suddenly. "It must be Tuesday." There is unashamed references to fellow Golden Age sleuths (H.M., Mrs. Bradley and Albert Campion). There is the entertainingly mad brother of the deceased. There
I do love me an academic mystery. And Edmund Crispin's delightful series starring Gervase Fen--the Oxford don and quirky amateur detective--is a marvelous example of academic mysteries done right. There is witty, sparkling dialogue. There is intellectual name-dropping--"There goes C. S. Lewis," said Fen suddenly. "It must be Tuesday." There is unashamed references to fellow Golden Age sleuths (H.M., Mrs. Bradley and Albert Campion). There is the entertainingly mad brother of the deceased. There is brilliant humor--it's worth the price of admission just for the description of Fen driving his sporty little red car, "Lily Christine." Oh...and, incidentally, a cleverly constructed "impossible" crime. Impossible, that is, if it's murder and not suicide.

Swan Song gives us murder at the opera. An Oxford opera house is putting on a production of Die Meistersinger and while the star of the show, Edwin Shorthouse, may sing like an angel most everyone who knew him thought his origins were from a much warmer climate. His drunken advances to every available (or even unavailable female) doesn't do anything for his popularity with the ladies...or their male friends and spouses. And his insistence on misunderstanding direction hasn't won him any points with the conductor. So, it's no surprise that few tears are shed when Shorthouse is found swinging at the end of a hangman's noose in his dressing room late one night. The trouble is that while there are plenty people with motive, there just doesn't seem to be any way that someone could have murdered him. The police are prepared to accept a case of suicide. But a stubborn coroner's jury will have it as murder. And then there are attacks on the wife of one of the other singers. A second member of the cast will die and a third will be attacked before Fen will reveal how a man can be murdered by hanging with no one else in the room--and how revenge can extend beyond the grave.

This is great fun and Crispin's writing is a delight. Very reminiscent of Dorothy L. Sayers--which probably explains why I like it so much. Four stars.

{This review is mine and was first posted on my blog at http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/20.... Please request permission to repost any portion. Thanks.} ...more

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Aug 25, 2022 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I am greatly enjoying reading Edmund Crispin's series of mysteries featuring Oxford don Gervase Fen. This was published in 1947 and involves the interesting scenario of an opera company rehearsing Die Meistersinger. Due to the war Wagner has been out of favour and Crispin has an interesting thread, running through the book, about a subject he obviously felt strongly about.

Edwin Shorthouse is the least popular member of the opera company. He is a lecherous drunk, who bullies and belittles others ...more

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Dec 27, 2023 Kavita rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery, uk, golden-age-mystery

My first Gervase Fen book. I intended to start with the first one but I found this book in a second-hand bookshop and just had to buy it! The story is set in a theatre, where all kinds of rivalries, jealousies, and fights abound. Adam and Elizabeth are the protagonists and Adam is friends with Fen, so when an obnoxious lead singer is found hanging in his dressing room at the theatre, Fen gets roped into the investigation.

What I found most interesting was the cultural aspect of the story. The op ...more

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Sep 20, 2022 Jill rated it really liked it

Shelves: edmund-crispin

This book is centred around an opera house, and the cast of the opera which is rehearsing for it’s first showing. Here we meet the victim of a murder, and like most Golden Age crimes, he happens to be a lecherous drunk who nobody likes. He assorts a young girl, but is stopped by another woman who fortunately enters the room. Quite soon after he is found hanged in his dressing room, not only having taken too much gin, but also drugged by that gin. The problem here being was it actually suicide or ...more

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Jul 11, 2014 Damaskcat rated it it was amazing

This book deserves five stars for the totally ingenious locked room murder alone. Edwin Shorthouse - opera singer - is a totally dislikeable corpse.. The whole cast of the Wagner opera in which he has a part have motives for disposing of him though to many - including the police - it appears to be suicide because no one could have committed the crime.

Of course Gervase Fen discovers a solution to the mystery of how anyone could have done with a little help from a skeleton and the police. I don't ...more

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Oct 15, 2022 Frances rated it liked it

Shelves: mystery-series

3.5*. This is a fun series with an eccentric academic as the detective, overly complex but intriguing mysteries (and this one absolutely takes the cake for that) and in this case a musical backstory as the case revolves around the setting of a Wagner opera in Oxford. You have to really love the Golden Age of mystery and weirdly eccentric English characters, but if you do, give this series a try.

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Jan 15, 2018 ShanDizzy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Although I love the eccentric Gervase Fen, I think in this story, one of my favorite characters who doesn't even figure prominently in the story, is John Barfield, who seemed never not to be eating. It's hilarious that when he enters scenes, he seems to be consuming food.

I really appreciate the way Crispin stated and described things -"And the situation was this, that she had fallen inexplicably and quite unexpectedly in love with an operatic tenor...How it came about she was never able clearly Although I love the eccentric Gervase Fen, I think in this story, one of my favorite characters who doesn't even figure prominently in the story, is John Barfield, who seemed never not to be eating. It's hilarious that when he enters scenes, he seems to be consuming food.

I really appreciate the way Crispin stated and described things -"And the situation was this, that she had fallen inexplicably and quite unexpectedly in love with an operatic tenor...How it came about she was never able clearly to remember, but it seems to have happened quite suddenly, without gestation or warning. One day Adam Langley was an agreeable but undifferentiated member of an operatic company; the next he shone alone and unreal. Elizabeth felt, in the face of this phenomenon, something of the awe of a Coenobite visited by an archangel and was startled at the hurried refocusing of familiar objects which such an experience involves."

"The room into which an elderly, heavy-footed maid-servant ushered her was untidy - so untidy as to suggest the aftermath of a burglary."

Crispin had such wit, sometimes in choosing the name of his characters - "...the stage-door-keeper shuffled out of it. He was an old man named Furbelow, with wispy hair and steel-rimmed spectacles...Mudge sighed, and pronounced, as though it were rude, the word "Furbelow". The stage-door-keeper materialized from among the peripheral wraiths and stood blinking at them. "Furbelow, you'd better come with us." Mudge was peremptory. "Sir Richard will want to hear what you have to say." "Who's this?" Sir Richard demanded with distaste." "The stage-door keeper, sir. His evidence is important."

I also like Gervase's idiosyncrasies - "It was not until they were properly underway that Adam recognized the force of that "with any luck". They would require a great deal of luck, he thought, sitting petrified in the front seat, if they were to get back at all. To realize that anyone is not a very good driver takes a little time; the mind is not eager, in the face of a long journey, to embrace this particular verity; and it was not until Fen emerged into the High Street, with the velocity of a benighted traveller pursued by spectres, that Adam became really alarmed...the car rushed on towards Headington. It was a small, red, battered and extremely noisy sports car; a chilled-looking female nude in chromium projected from its radiator cap; across its bonnet were scrawled in large white letters the words LILY CHRISTINE III. "I bought her," said Fen, removing both hands from the wheel in order to search for a cigarette, "from an undergraduate who was sent down. But of course she was laid up during the war, and I don't think it's improved her. He shook his head, sombrely. "Things keep falling out of the engine," he explained.

Not surprising, the victim was universally disliked - "There could be no doubt, thought Adam, that the death of Edwin Shorthouse was not much regretted either by Peacock or anyone else connected with the production. Adam said as much to Fen. "I know," said Fen. "It seems positively indelicate to be trying to discover his murderer." ...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Jenn Estepp rated it liked it

Shelves: world-at-war-twice, sleuths-and-gumshoes, libraries-are-great, historically-speaking

Ah, Fen. I've missed you. Not quite sure why I waited so long to get back to you. If you like your vintage mysteries with a dash of absurdity and humor, Crispin isn't a bad way to go. Swan Song wasn't *quite* as rollicking as a book whose descriptions begins with "Hurrah!" ought to be, but still lots of fun and it goes down quickly. Also, it's very twisty, in a good way. It's not necessary to have read the earlier books to enjoy it, although if you have, some of the bits will be even funnier. ...more

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