Holy Disorders - Softcover

Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Bruce Montgomery, an English crime writer and composer. He graduated from St John's College, Oxford, in 1943, with a BA in modern languages, having for two years been its organist and choirmaster. From 1943 to 1945 he taught at Shrewsbury School and in 1944 published the first of nine Gervase Fen novels, The Case of the Gilded Fly. He became a well respected reviewer of crime, writing for the Sunday Times from 1967 until his death in 1978. He also composed the music for many of the Carry On fims.

What fun! The highlights of this book include academic and religious eccentrics, a character named Henry Fielding (who must field many questions about his famous name), and a marriage proposal beside a radish garden. Narrator Stephen Thorne enhances this delightful mystery set in England during WWII. Thorne expertly presents characters, both aristocrats and servants; quaint accents; and puns and wordplay. His delivery of the unflattering descriptions of characters is hilarious. Gervase Fen is called upon to solve the murder of a church organist who had not an enemy in the world. Was it spies? Or could it have been the witches who have been active in the village since the seventeenth century? A grand choice for those who enjoy the Golden Age of British detective fiction. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine