Love Lies Bleeding by Edmund CrispinMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
A wordy and clever story first published in 1948 with a vocabulary that will send you to the dictionary every other page.
It's been years since I read an Edmund Crispin mystery so when NetGalley offered this title, I volunteered. His slueth is Gervase Fen, an eccentric English professor at Oxford.
FIRST SENTENCE: "The headmaster sighed. It was, he recognized, a plaintive and unmanly noise, but for the moment he was quite unable to suppress it."
THE STORY: Gervase Fen has been invited to Castrevenford Boy's School to present the prizes on Speech Day. Instead he finds himself embroiled in the murder of two schoolmasters and the disappearance of a young woman. Throw in a long-lost possible script of Love's Labor's Won and letters written by Shakespeare and there you have it.
WHAT I THOUGHT: Readers either love or hate these mysteries. How often have you come across the following words in a mystery: nugatory, hebetude, chiaroscuro, vitiate, stertorously, irrefragable, etc.) or come across them in any written thing? Keeping a dictionary nearby is recommended or, like me, you can intuit the meaning from the way the words are used.
Interestingly enough the mystery is solved about 80% of the way through the story. After that Gervase spends the rest of the book explaining everything to the headmaster.
BOTTOM LINE: This classic mystery of the Golden Age might not appeal to modern readers. The pace is slower and the language is difficult. On the other hand, a number of reviewers seem to love the old mysteries. This is an outstanding example.
No. of Pages: 276
Copyright: March 21, 2017 (Originally published in 1948)
ISBN-10: 1911295314
ISBN-13: 978-1911295310
Disclaimer: An advanced reading copy (ARC) of this book was provided to me by Ipso Press and Net Galley for an honest review.
EDMUND CRISPIN was the pen name of Robert Bruce Montgomery (1921-1978), an English crime writer and composer.
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