Edmund Crispin - The Moving Toyshop

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very enjoyable nonsense

This is a very amusing book in which the crime/detective story is really just a vehicle for amusing writing and humorous capers. There is a crime, certainly, and the book's protagonists solve it in the end, but it is chiefly an entertainment with that arch, self-conscious Oxford wit at its centre and the plot merely something to hang it on.

And that's just fine with me. Edmund Crispin writes with genuine wit and often with humour, too. He creates just-believable characters and puts them in a wholly implausible story involving dead heiresses, bizarre wills, car chases, eccentric professors...you name it. It is terrific fun, especially if you largely ignore the plot. Crispin does go to some lengths to set up a mystery which depends upon who was in exactly which room when, but to be honest it didn't matter that much to me. The style and characters are what make this book, and I enjoyed both hugely. One does need to make considerable allowances for attitudes of the time - especially toward women, who are generally insulted or patronised - but the book is a period piece and is very enjoyable on that basis.

The Author's Note before the Contents Page gives a good flavour of Crispin's style:
"None but the most blindly credulous will imagine the characters and events in this story to be anything but fictitious. It is true that the ancient and noble city of Oxford is, of all the towns of England, the likeliest progenitor of unlikely events and persons. But there are limits."

If you like that, you will like the book, and I can recommend it as a very enjoyable piece of nonsense.