While many of the diversions bring humour to the story, if you’re only on the lookout for a good mystery you might find they get in the way. Not all of these subplots further the course of the main plot, and some feel like padding in what is already longer than most of the earlier works in the series. The story contains numerous side plots, featuring jilted lovers, nymphomaniac wives, sadistic farmers, and contractors from the South West Energy Board sent out to fix a malfunctioning transformer affectionately named ‘the pisser’ because of the noise it makes. Once the head has been discovered, it soon disappears to be replaced by that of a pig, and there’s a locked-room situation, with a murder occurring rather farcically in a fairground tent. The brutality doesn’t last long, but the case grows very strange. There’s a body without its head, another with arms and legs removed, and their positions swapped. Some of the killings in Crispin’s final Gervase Fen novel, however, would not be out of place in Southern California as painted by James Ellroy. The South Coast of England seems to provide ample material for writers of crime fiction, from Graham Greene to Graham Hurley.
The different accounts are enough to motivate Fen to probe a little deeper, but when a similar murder occurs while the original suspect is behind bars, the investigation is re-opened, and carries on despite the ineptitude of the local police. Before they can begin to say no, they are drawn into the mystery when a bystander claims that the accused was nowhere near the scene at the time of the crime. JG Padmore, a journalist writing a book on a recent killing, wants Fen’s help making the murderer and their victim seem more fully realised on the page. Professor Fen finds him in Devon, where a string of brutal killings and decapitations has the local constabulary puzzled. The book has been reprinted in a fine paperback edition, with a fresh cover illustration, by Bloomsbury Reader. Although the author makes many contemporary references in The Glimpses of the Moon, his style is marked by Golden Age influences.
The glimpses of the moon series#
This makes it quite a late arrival in the context of Classics in September, and it was the last novel in a series going back to The Case of the Gilded Fly in 1944. The Glimpses of the Moon was first published in 1977. Written by Edmund Crispin - Oxford don and armchair detective Gervase Fen saw a fair bit of England in the course of nine novels and two collections of short stories.
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