The Case of the Gilded Fly (1945) by Edmund Crispin

Robert Bruce Montgomery was a schoolteacher and composer who’d read Carr’s novel The Crooked Hinge while a student at Oxford. The experience was life-changing, inspiring him to write mystery novels himself under the name of Edmund Crispin.* I’ve read a small bit of his short fiction. I didn’t care for his most well-known short, “Beware of the Trains,” but I enjoyed “The Name on the Window” and really enjoyed “Who Killed Baker?” So, spurred on by some positive comments I saw on Ho-Ling's Honkaku Discord server, I decided to give his novels a try.

The Case of the Gilded Fly opens on a train journey to Oxford, where Crispin gives us some quick windows into the key players. There’s Robert Warner, who’s putting on the satirical play Metromania, as well as his mistress, Rachel West. Two of the actresses are Yseut and Helen Haskell. The half-sisters are night-and-day in personality, with Helen being the studious and skilled one, Yseut the sexual one. She had an affair with Robert and is determined to get him back. There’s also Nicholas Barclay, a smug jerk, palling around with Jean Whitelegge, who’s in love with organist Donald Fellows. Fellows, for his part, is carrying a torch for Yseut, to the frustration of both Jean and Nicholas. Another producer, Sheila McGaw, is also on her way to Oxford. Also on board is Nigel Blake, a journalist who’s returning to Oxford to see his former instructor, Gervase Fen, as well as to hit on Helen. Fen is currently arguing with Sir Richard Freeman, Chief Constable of Oxford, about the value of detective novels, Sir Freeman being an amateur English critic the same way Fen is an amateur detective. Fen’s looking to solve a crime.“A really splendidly complicated crime!”

“Within the week that followed three of these eleven died by violence.”

It should surprise no one when Yseut is found shot in Donald’s apartment. It looks like suicide at first glance, but Fen notes some odd details that it make it clear she was murdered. But no one was in the apartment, and witnesses outside swear no one went in after her. So how was it done? There are plenty of motives flying around beyond the love affairs that she was the center of. Helen comes into a lot of money now that her sister is dead. And even Sheila, who’s otherwise unconnected to the group, has a motive: *she was supposed to produce Metromania until Yseut stepped in to get her removed. And what of the titular gilded fly, a garish ring that the killer shoved onto Yseut’s finger?

It’s clear that Carr was a massive influence on Crispin. Gervase Fen is a thinner Gideon Fell (even referencing him!) with an actual teaching job. Nigel plays the role of the typical Carr hero, following the detective around, never saying anything smart, and falling in love with the heroine. There’s even a bit where a minor character tells an M.R. Jamesian ghost story, something that I’m sure Carr would have loved. There’s a very meta undertone to the whole book, mostly from Fen, who technically respects the fourth wall but loves to throw a volley over it now and then. And of course, there’s the impossible crime.

But I don’t think all of this quite clicks together. Part of it is the tone. It’s all very arch and witty and Oxfordy. Apparently, I was not in the mood for that. The tone was a discordant note for me. Fen is also frustrating as a detective. He’s not really likeable, just constantly insulting people and bowling over them. There’s a bit about two-thirds through where Nigel reflects on the type of man Fen is—curious, interested in people even when he knows that what they do better than them—and I wish we’d gotten more of *that detective.

Fen is constantly wondering if he shouldn’t just let Yseut’s killer off—really, he’s begging for an excuse to do this. But as the character’s note, Yseut might have been personally very annoying but she really wasn’t that bad. No ruined careers, broken marriages, lovelorn suicides, or anything else to really justify how happy the characters are to forget the whole thing. Again, very Carrian, wanting to let the killer off, but usually Carr makes his killers a little more sympathetic, his victims a little more monstrous. Combine this with an eyebrow-raising comment about the killer’s motive and I don’t feel very charitable towards Crispin.

This is annoying, because the impossible crime itself is quite good. Not a shining example of the genre—I really don’t know if the murder was as possible as Fen implies—but solid enough, and I kicked myself when I looked back and saw how obvious the method was. Fen brags that he knew who the killer was three minutes after arriving on the scene…and okay, fair; you can solve this if you actually think about what the crime scene actually means. But I think this whole, “I solved the crime in a nanosecond” stuff doesn’t work as well as some authors think it does. Sure, the detective looks smart for saying it, but if you carry through on that promise that the crime is that solvable, you run the risk of someone flipping back and solving the crime with half the book left to go. There’s also not really that much in the way of cluing or deduction. Fen freely admits that he’s an intuitive detective, and once you figure out how the crime was done, you have your killer. And the titular fly means nothing, the reasoning boiling down to spiteful symbolism.

So, this book wasn’t a pure winner for me. I liked it, in the end. The impossible crime is good and some of my complaints are stylistic. If I’d been in a better mood I might have liked it more, and if you have a higher tolerance for literary flights of fancy it might be up your alley. It's a young man's work, and I'm sure that he improved. I’m giving this a Recommended, with Caveats. 

*Douglas G. Greene’s The Man Who Explained Miracles, 177, 306.

Other Reviews: CrossExaminingCrime, Only Detect, Do You Write Under Your Own Name?, The Invisible Event, FictionFan's Book Reviews.