Literary Birthday – 2 October – Edmund Crispin

Edmund Crispin was born on 2 October 1921 and died on 15 September 1978.

Edmund Crispin Quotes

1. None but the most blindly credulous will imaging 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. (The Moving Toyshop)
2. As the popularity of science-fiction increases, so inevitably does the volume of clownish imprecation against it.
3. ‘What’s more, I don’t believe any policeman uses words like “antonym”. I don’t believe you’re a policeman at all.’ (The Long Divorce)
4. The artistic temperament is too often only an alibi for lack of responsibility….
5. At this rate, he felt, he might even live to see the day when novelists described their characters by some other device than that of manoeuvring them into examining themselves in mirrors. (The Glimpses of the Moon)
6. ‘Well, I’m going to the police,’ said Cadogan. ‘If there’s anything I hate, it’s the sort of book in which characters don’t go to the police when they’ve no earthly reason for not doing so.’ (The Moving Toyshop)

Source for quotes: Goodreads

Edmund Crispin was an English crime writer, considered by many to be one of the last great exponents of the ‘classic’ crime mystery. Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery, a composer. He wrote nine detective novels and two collections of short stories. The stories feature Oxford don, Gervase Fen, who is a Professor of English at the University and a fellow of St Christopher’s College, a fictional institution. The series starts with The Case of the Gilded Fly and ends with The Glimpses of the Moon. The novels have complex plots and fantastic, somewhat unbelievable solutions, including examples of the locked room mystery. They are written in a humorous, literary, and sometimes farcical style. They are also among the few mystery novels to break the fourth wall occasionally and speak directly to the audience. He was inducted into the prestigious Detection Club in 1947.

Source for photograph: Audible

by Amanda Patterson
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