Looking Back: "Swan Song"

The centerpiece of the book reviewed this week on the Classic Mysteries Podcast, "Murder a Mile High," is the murder of an operatic tenor, a breed that often takes more than its share of unfair jibes.

On the other hand, the book does remind me that the principal victim in one of my favorite mysteries is a particularly nasty  and unpleasant operatic baritone, named Edwin Shorthouse. He is murdered quite effectively in Edmund Crispin's marvelous "Swan Song," a book which I reviewed a couple of years ago (you can listen to that review here). Let me explain some of the reasons why it is one of my favorites - one I recommend wholeheartedly:

It is an impossible crime. Based on the evidence, there is no way that the hanging of Shorthouse could possible be a murder - and yet, given the evidence that he had been drugged and that his hands may have been tied, it could not be suicide or accident. As readers of this blog know, I love a good impossible-crime mystery.

It is fairly clued. In fact, the author occasionally breaks the "fourth wall" to tell us directly, for example, that an eyewitness account is correct. That he does so in ways that may make us draw possibly incorrect conclusions is both fair and fun.

It is very funny. The humor can be dark, though there are occasional touches of slapstick comedy. For example, when police notify the singer's brother by telegram that Shorthouse has been murdered, they get a telegram back which reads “Delighted. Hoping for this for months. Suicide eh query. Don’t bother me now.”

It is remarkably well-written, by an author who can charm you and then shock you. The first quarter of the book could be an elegant comedy of theatrical/operatic manners (with some menancing undertones, perhaps), until the reader is jarred awake suddenly by this chapter ending:

Meanwhile, in a dressing-room almost directly opposite to Furbelow's open door, Edwin Shorthouse swayed a little in a cold draught. Now and again the rope creaked against the iron hook from which he was suspended, but that was the only sound.

It is by an author you should meet. If you enjoy Golden Age mysteries at all, and haven't read any Edmund Crispin, you should meet him and his principal character, Oxford don Gervase Fen. Fen is marvelously eccentric. I enjoy all his cases (including the much-better-known "The Moving Toyshop"), but I think this may be his best.

Happily, "Swan Song" is available again, in a Felony & Mayhem Press edition. It really should not be missed.