A review by christinecc
The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin
3.0
This started very strong! An evocative chapter that perfectly describes the discomfort of traveling by train and everyone's mounting frustration at the train's ability to just pull into the station already! Everyone's luggage is ready and taking up the room! So the author clearly knows how to establish a fun, comedic tone tinged with anticipation. We meet seven characters (which is a bit of an info dump and I needed to go back a few times to memorize the various relationships) off the bat. Then the chapter closes with the announcement that three of these people will die violently by the end of the novel.
Fun!
It's not a bad book, but the characters never get the development that would move the book from a good three-star read to a very good four-star. The mystery is also fairly basic, not poorly planned or predictable, but the culprit is fairly easy to spot even if the method is difficult to untangle. This is also one of those mystery books with a detached detective in the form of Oxford professor Gervase Fen. We get a bit more substance from him when he realizes he may have made a mistake near the end and some terrible consequences ensue, but for the most part he doesn't offer a lot in terms of depth.
Recommended if you want an amusing, well-written detective story. I'll probably pick up the author's more famous sequel, "The Moving Toyshop," but I'll temper my expectations.
Fun!
It's not a bad book, but the characters never get the development that would move the book from a good three-star read to a very good four-star. The mystery is also fairly basic, not poorly planned or predictable, but the culprit is fairly easy to spot even if the method is difficult to untangle. This is also one of those mystery books with a detached detective in the form of Oxford professor Gervase Fen. We get a bit more substance from him when he realizes he may have made a mistake near the end and some terrible consequences ensue, but for the most part he doesn't offer a lot in terms of depth.
Recommended if you want an amusing, well-written detective story. I'll probably pick up the author's more famous sequel, "The Moving Toyshop," but I'll temper my expectations.