"Holy Disorders"

Today's offering on the Classic Mysteries podcast comes from another Golden Age author who is among my favorites: Edmund Crispin. "Holy Disorders" is about an impossible murder in a church - in fact, as with last week's novel, Catherine Aird's "His Burial Too," it involves a victim who is crushed by a massive piece of stone - in this case, the slab covering a tomb - inside a church, in such a way that it appears to have been impossible for anyone to commit the murder. You can listen to the full review here.

"Holy Disorders" features Crispin's Oxford University professor Gervase Fen as its detective. To call Fen "eccentric" may be a gross underestimation, but the book itself is full of both Crispin's humor - which is superb - and sudden juxtapositions with some very frightening and ugly horrors - which is effective. There is a background of evil here; the person or persons responsible for the crimes are truly chilling. But there is also a lot of very funny material here; if you like the macabre overtones of "black comedy," you'll have no trouble with the book. It's a puzzle-type mystery, and there are pretty good clues scattered throughout, although the identity of the ultimate culprit may surprise you. It was a fine entry in the Fen series, and it is very much worth your time and enjoyment.