 First edition 1946 | |
| Author | Edmund Crispin |
|---|---|
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Series | Gervase Fen |
| Genre | Detective fiction |
| Publisher | Victor Gollancz |
Publication date | 1946 |
| Media type | |
| Preceded by | Holy Disorders |
| Followed by | Swan Song |
The Moving Toyshop (1946) is a work of detective fiction by Edmund Crispin, featuring his recurrent sleuth, Gervase Fen, an Oxford professor of English Language and Literature.
The title comes from Pope's The Rape of the Lock : [1]
With varying vanities, from every part,
They shift the moving toyshop of their heart
The novel is dedicated to the poet Philip Larkin, Crispin's contemporary at St John's College, Oxford. In chapter 10, tongue-in-cheek reference is made to Larkin, with the mention of an undergraduate essay called "The Influence of Sir Gawain on Arnold's Empedocles on Etna ", about which Fen comments: "Good heavens, that must be Larkin: the most indefatigable searcher out of pointless correspondences the world has ever known."
Famous poet Richard Cadogan takes an impromptu holiday to Oxford, where he studied at the university, after growing bored with the literary life in the suburbs. After finding himself in a high street, in the middle of the night and with no place to stay, he stumbles across a shop with its awning still up. Closer inspection reveals it to be a toyshop, and on finding the door unlocked, curiosity leads Cadogan inside, then up a flight of stairs to a flat where he finds the murdered body of an elderly woman, before being knocked unconscious. He wakes up the next morning in a supply closet, but after escaping and bringing back the police, the toyshop is no longer there, replaced, it seems, with a grocer's.
Bewildered, Cadogan turns to an old friend at Oxford University, eccentric professor and amateur sleuth Gervase Fen, to help him solve the mystery of the moving toyshop.
The book provided the source for the famous merry-go-round sequence at the climax of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train . [2] All the major elements of the scene – the two men struggling, the accidentally shot attendant, the out-of-control merry-go-round, and the crawling under the moving merry-go-round to disable it – are present in Crispin's novel, [3] though he received no screen credit for it.
In 2006, detective novelist P. D. James picked The Moving Toyshop as one of her five "most riveting crime novels". [4] About Crispin, she said, "[He] is one of the few mystery writers able to combine situation comedy and high spirits with detection."
Other crime writers have also given praise to Crispin for the paciness and humour of his work. Scottish crime writer Val McDermid called The Moving Toyshop, ""A classic crime novel with a surreal streak… It's a clever, energetic romp, written with wit", while A. L. Kennedy described Crispin as, "One of the undiscovered treasures of British crime fiction: [his] storytelling is intelligent, humane, surprising and rattling good fun." [5]
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Gervase Fen is a fictional amateur detective and Oxford Professor of English Language and Literature created by Edmund Crispin. Fen appears in nine novels and two books of short stories published between 1944 and 1979. Fen is an unconventional detective who is often faced with a locked room mystery to solve.
Holy Disorders is a 1945 detective novel by the British writer Edmund Crispin. It the second in his series featuring the Oxford professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen. The novel is set in 1940 during the early stages of the Second World War. The title is a reference to Chaucer.
Swan Song is a 1947 detective novel by the British writer Edmund Crispin, the fourth in his series featuring the Oxford Don and amateur detective Gervase Fen. It was the first in a new three-book contract the author has signed with his publishers. It received a mixed review from critics.